Family, Gold, and Silver
by ArieSemir
Summary: Tyr and Beka pose as a married couple, others vacation on a beautiful vacation planet, and intrigue is in the air! 'Tis now updated and FINISHED!
1. Some of Us Get Leave

Wow...took awhile to think of that title. And I'm still not sure I like it *shrug*. Anyhow...  
  
Rating-probably PG but Beka or Harper might becomer a bit foul-mouthed later, so PG-13  
  
Spoilers-Takes place after Immaculate Perception, before Tunnel, spoilers up till then.  
  
Plot- Beka and Tyr get to pretend to be married (I know its been done before but I really did think of it on my own [pic]), and the rest are forced to spend a few days on a gorgeous, sunny planet. Oh the unfairness of it all.  
  
Couple(s)- tentative Tyr/Beka, nothing hot and bothered  
  
And I must admit to being rather adverb happy!  
  
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Teaser pt. 1  
  
Dylan sat as his desk, scrubbing his hand through his sandy colored hair. It was the fish... Castalians again, this time angry about some diplomatic slight of the part of, who else, the Sabra-Jaguar pride. All he needed to resolve this minor crisis was a simple apology from one or another ambassador from the allied Pride. "Just an apology," he muttered. He opened his mouth to ask his ship to remind him why exactly he'd allowed the annoyingly decadant archduke of Pride Jaguar to sign his charter.  
  
A melodious chime echoed and he lifted his head slowly to regard the office door. "Enter." His blonde First Officer did just that, tapping a flexi against her palm. "Why exactly did I let Charlemagne Bolivar sign the Commonwealth Charter?"  
  
Beka blinked. "Let him? You're lucky you didn't have to beg on bended knees." He glared at her, and she shook her head. "Never mind." She proceeded to shoot him a piercing glare of her own. "Hey, I heard the funniest thing just now. Someone informed me that while you, Harper, Rommie, and Trance are exploring the beautiful beaches of Soral III, I get to attend a diplomatic conference in the Tiradis sector of the Lesser Magellanic Cloud with Tyr, posing as his wife." She paused. "Funny, huh?"  
  
Dylan had the grace to look a little sheepish. "Listen, Beka," he temporarily forgot his troubles in an attempt to mollify the fiery young woman, "I knew you weren't going to be...thrilled about this, but we need to find out what's going on there, why so many of the systems are hostile to the idea of a renewed Commonwealth."  
  
Beka gestured impatiently with the flexi. "That I know. I can read Common, remember? What I don't understand is-"  
  
The door whooshed open again, but this entrant looked nothing like the first. Dark eyes blazed, and Dylan unconsciously stiffened in response to a situation his mind automatically labeled a threat. Large, irate Nietzscheans had a tendency to inspire such reactions. "Captain Hunt," an icily furious voice began, "I would greatly appreciate knowing the meaning of this." He punctuated this by slamming the flexi of his own hard on the large desk.  
  
Captain Valentine seemed barely to notice her crewmate's...unpleasant demeanor. She pointed to him and stage whispered that she didn't think he found this very funny. Her pale eyes glinted with a wry humor. Only then did the Weapons Officer recall her presence, and he quickly turned his temper on her. "You knew about this?"  
  
She held her hands up defensively, unsuccessfully suppressing a suspiciously amused grin. "Hey, I'm on your side here."  
  
Tyr was unsure whether to take offense at her evident enjoyment of his anger before mellowing suddenly and giving the blue-eyed woman a half-smile of his own. "It appears that is precisely what our good captain desires."  
  
Dylan was apparently forgotten as the light-hearted grin melted from Beka's face. She directed a dirty look toward her shipmate. "What do you know, two funny men in single, tiny room. How lucky can a girl get?" Obviously he hadn't been forgotten after all. She rolled her eyes and left, shaking her head.  
  
Tyr watched the door slide shut behind his superior officer and murmured something to himself. All Dylan caught of the low stream of words was something about how well the First Officer looked while leaving a room in a temper. He glanced up in surprise but was answered with another small smile before the other man left to do...whatever Nietzscheans did in their spare time. Perfect his plan to conquer known space, very likely.  
  
Dylan chuckled at his crew. His hundred High Guard-trained Lancers might have been more useful in a firefight, but only those two would be able to pull this off.  
  
~*~*~*~*~*  
  
pt. 2  
  
The scene in one of the crew quarter could not have possibly contrasted any more with that in the captain's tidy quarters. Shiny metallic cans littered the ground, lending themselves to quite a vivid sight with the brightly- colored garments strewn about, covering nearly every square centimeter of the grey carpeted room. And instead of a uniformed High Guard captain sitting quietly at a desk, a short, hyperactive engineer stood on a long board, which lay diagonally across a small bed. He tilted from side to side, in real danger of falling off completely and fracturing something. Arms flailing wildly, he shouted happily to the empty room. "Ooh, and he rides that wave like nobody's busines! Judges give him a ten, a ten, and, what's that he says? a ten! Seamus Zelazny Harper is now officially the freakin' king...no, no Emperor of the deep blue sea."  
  
A holographic image of an exotically beautiful woman appeared at the foot of the bed, startling the spiky-haired youth so that he slipped and for a minute, grappled with the bedsheets in a vain attempt to regain some semblence of balance. He gave up and half-jumped, half-tumbled to the ground. The hologram's delicate features twisted into a faint grimace at the state of her chief (and sole) engineer's quarters. "Aren't you supposed to be working on Tyr and Beka's documents and identification?"  
  
"I know, I know, work before play. Now, normally you'd be right," here he bounded across the room to a small table and hastily sorted through a dozen or so flexis, "but I am way ahead of you. Uh, marriage and birth certificates," he held up a different one for each item he mentioned, "pilot's licenses, and proof of diplomatic status in the Tiradisene government." He beamed at Andromeda, extremely pleased with himself. With Harper, that was more or less a permanent state of being. "I even got my suitcase packed, Rom-Doll. So tell me, will your, uh, lovely avatar be joining us?"  
  
The hologram's nod was almost imperceptible. "My android body will accompany you."  
  
If possible, Harper's smile grew even larger at her reply. "Yes! Tell me, is she the, uh, itsy-bitsy, teeny-weeny, yellow polka dot bikini type?"  
  
Andromeda rolled her eyes much in the manner of her First Officer. "You're incorrigible, Harper."  
  
Undaunted, he ran and leapt back onto his surfboard. "That's how the ladies love me!" He resumed his enthusiastic pantomiming with a resounding, "Whoo!"  
  
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Yes, there'll be more...sometime! 


	2. A Breakin but a friendly one

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Chapter the Second  
  
Shaidyna  
  
The shriek of weapons fire echoed through the cramped corridor moments before a slender brunette careened past, firing ceaselessly behind her. Shaidyna assessed her surroundings with a flit of dark eyes and kicked down a nearby door. Barely registering the room's occupant, she tossed a badge in his general direction as she explained her intrusion. All this she accomplished without a break in her fire. "I'm with hotel security, and those," she gestured with her firearm to the open door as she continued to shoot through it, "are part of an intergalactic crime syndicate, specializing in assassination and narcotics. Very friendly bunch." A switch on her weapon flipped, a surprisingly powerful fling out the door, and a small explosion made short work of the woman's pursuers. She tapped a communicator affixed to her shoulder and requested a team to drag the now- unconscious criminals away and lock them up. "Three Nietzscheans, two Ogami, and a Nightsider, to top it off," she said idly as she gingerly probed a gash on her upper arm. Only when she glanced up did she catch a good look at the customer into whose suite she's so rudely barged. And that makes Nietzschean number four, she thought dryly. This one was very well- muscled, with a smooth bronze complexion and long hair twisted into braids or dreadlocks. Quite an impressive sight, Shaidyna admitted to herself. Especially the unmistakable resemblance to a certain...  
  
"What the hell is going on out there?!" a female voice demanded from the bedroom.  
  
The Nietzschean kept his eyes on the newcomer as he replied, "I believe our...guest was about to answer that."  
  
Shaidyna noted his gaze as it traveled to her forearms, then back to her face. She couldn't help smiling inwardly. Moments later, a lovely blonde woman emerged, towelling her short tresses. A luxurious silk robe, the exact shade of her cerulean eyes, moulded itself very faithfully to her form. Every so often, she would glance down, and her lips would tighten. Apparently, the expensive-looking article of clothing irritated her. A glimpse at her pale forearms revealed the woman's human heritage. "Huh... so explain." Not Nietzschean but definitely full of attitude.  
  
Shaidyna nodded coolly. "There's really not much to say. I've been tracking these people for awhile now, as they came and went. They didn't suspect me until-" she cut off. With an apologetic smile, she spoke again. "There are some things you can't hide from scans." And let them make of that what they would. "Uh, anyway, I can send someone up here to repair the damage and give you credit for a free stay or you can move to a different room and stay as long as you like, for free."  
  
"Apparently," the man began, "she put up quite a fight. Two Ogami, a Nightsider, and three Nietzscheans?"  
  
The blonde reconsidered her. "Ogami and... and Nietzscheans?" And Ubers, Shaidyna guesses she'd been about to say. Very odd, being married to one, that she should almost let such a slur slip. "I don't know many who could have pulled that off. What did you say your name was?"  
  
Shaidyna indicated the man. "Your husband has my badge. I am Shaidyna Ar'Semir." The Nietzschean's deep, penetrating eyes sparked at the name, but otherwise, he showed no signs of recognition.  
  
His wife's eyes cut to the man when Shaidyna named him as her husband. Perhaps they were arguing. "We'll move." The jagged scarlet line that marred Shaidyna's bicep caught her attention. "Do you want a towel for that?"  
  
The bleeding had already stopped, but... "That is very kind of you; I'd be happy for one."  
  
She sat beside her spouse and cocked her head expectantly. "Sweetheart?"  
  
'Sweetheart' gave her a flat look but stood and disappeared into the next room. His wife followed him with her glacially azure gaze, grinning faintly. "He's good for some things." Shaidyna doubted she was supposed to her that. "Outrunning and outgunning six Dherans?" She shook her head in disbelief and she bent over Shaidyna's wound.  
  
The other woman's concern for her welfare confused Shaidyna, but she didn't object. "Why do you say they were Dherans? They're the type to avoid public channels; if they were, they wouldn't like you knowing, and if not, they'd be insulted."  
  
Nodding, she dabbed the gash with the damp towel she'd used to dry her hair. "My beloved husband and I aren't exactly advertising ourselves on the 'public channels'."  
  
Shaidyna thought she understood. Supposedly, the Tiradisene government was hosting some diplomatic affair. In general, such happenings were open to all, or at least not secret, but the... extremely persuasive Dheran organization had infiltrated the administration, and the Tiradisene beauracracy was even rumored to be a mere pawn for the crime lords. Few knew this for a fact, and attendees of any Tiradisene official function like that would either have to be investigating the Dherans undercover or employees for the syndicate. She wondered which category this couple fell under. In any case, it would be best for both of them if she dropped the subject. "That's a beautiful helix."  
  
  
  
Her desire to change the topic of conversation was justified when the Nietzschean re-entered, holding a pristine cloth and a spray designed to minimize infection. "Most likely, the wound has cauterized itself, but I wouldn't leave a hangnail untreated in a place like this." His velvety baritone was tinged with disdain. He handed both items to his wife, who applied first the spray, then the towel to the angry-looking slash with a soft touch. She seemed surprise at Shaidyan's lack of expression as she applied the stinging mist. The man ran his eyes over her again but still, kept his thoughts to himself.  
  
"And you're done." She smiled warmly at Shaidyna, who couldn't help returning it.  
  
"You've both been exceptionally accomodating. Now, I need your names, so I can record the change of rooms as well as the credit for the visit. Then I must be sure that my employer is not in service of that...charming club." The last part she said sarcastically but with a ring of truth. She'd hate to imagine what that would mean for her.  
  
"Actually..." Shaidyna raised a questioning eyebrow.  
  
"Actually, we would, uh, prefer if you didn't write anything down about us." The words came out slowly. The woman seemed to be trying to communicate something to Shaidyna that she wasn't willing to say aloud. Of course, the Dherans. Those working both for and against them would want as little possible trace of their passing.  
  
"Of course," she conceded with a short nod. Upon inspection, she found the gash to be a shallow one and nearly healed. "Thank you both, for your hospitality. I'll return when we have your room." She casually deposited the stained cloth on the arm of an over-stuffed chair as she stepped through the ruined doorway.  
  
Her ears caught a faint noise from the suite when she was a few feet away. "You were certainly friendly with the total and complete stranger." Doubtless she was imagined to be out of earshot.  
  
"Well," she told the empty hallway. "I may not be able to fool the scanners, but it looks like I still got it with everyone else." The tune she whistled as she descended a flight of stairs was a jaunty one, the words somehow eluding her. 


	3. Obviously, Nietzscheans also possess the...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  
  
Le troisieme  
  
Beka  
  
"You certainly were friendly with the total and complete stranger."  
  
"She's after the Dherans." Beka tossed the remark off casually, but the intensity in Tyr's voice when he spoke again told her he hadn't taken it so.  
  
He sat on his heels in front of her as she sat, his finger pointed at her in admonition. "Rebecca, if you said a single word..." He didn't feel the need to continue.  
  
"She said I had a lovely helix," she said in response to his unasked question. "That's all." Well, close enough. "I didn't even get to give her the old 'oh, this old thing?' before you came back." She ran her fingers over the metallic band of delicate, golden arches and short, vertical lines of the same shining shade, all shaped to bring to mind a strand of DNA. The idea behind the unusual piece of jewelry was a compromise between the classic gold wedding band of the human tradition, originating from old Earth and surviving to the present day, and the customary double helix arm band worn by wedded Nietzschean couples. It was popular in this area of space, as it contained one of the highest concentration of human/Nietzschean couples in the known worlds. "I wonder where Harper found these."  
  
"I'm sure the little professor has sources we'd be better not to question." Beka laughed softly. Too true. "So it is your opinion that she suspected nothing?" A question, but she had better answer how he wanted or else.  
  
"If anything, we should be the paranoid ones, about her. Oh wait, we already are. At least one of us." She stood and left to change into something a little less...clingy.  
  
Tyr called after her that her uncharacteristic bout of generosity had obviously left her sense of humor intact.  
  
  
  
"Aww, you know you love it, honeybunch." After this he proceeded to mutter about idiotic pet names. "Darling!" she yelled, rummaging through her drawers and the closet they shared. "Remind me never to let Rommie pack for me again!" Helplessly, she gave up searching for something decent and settled for the least revealing. Cursing Dylan and his ship and diplomatic missions, Beka kicked the door shut as she shrugged off the robe. True, she and Tyr were supposed to act married in public, but that didn't entail ogling in private. "Don't flatter yourself, Valentine," she laughed to herself, "you could practice the Dance of the Seven Veils in front of him wearing only the seven veils, and he'd just tell you what you did wrong. And probably show you how it's meant to be done." She tugged on a pair of form-hugging leather pants, Not that Rommie packed any other kind, with silver roses climbing the legs and a sheer top of the same silver with a skimpy black tank top underneath, scooped very low and cut very high. "I might as well go in bra," she confided to the beveled mirror. "Either I'm Kiki, babe cop of the Wild West, or Busty L'amour, smoldering love goddess of temptation."  
  
She felt Tyr's eyes leisurely inspecting her newest outfit and the very obvious figure underneath it when she exited the bedroom. "I'm guessing this is Kiki? Harper will be disappointed to have missed it."  
  
Beka stopped dead in her tracks. "Harper!" Tyr's head turned to regard her impassively. "He was helping Rommie set all this up. They're off on Soral III, drinking their little umbrella drinks...well, except for Rommie.while I'm stuck in one of Harper's late-night holodramas!" She sat in the comfortable chair recently vacated by the security officer and sank at least six inches into it. "Now that's a chair."  
  
"I hope none of those garments have long sleeves," Tyr remarked as he perused a stack of flexis.  
  
"Sleeves?"  
  
He ignored her query. "The robe, of course, is acceptable."  
  
"Gee, thanks, pookiebear. Do I get a jacket too?" Her tone was overly- sweet, irritation readily apparent.  
  
"The winter season on Tiradisen is generally very mild, and besides, we will be aboard the Andromeda long before that." Beka thought it strange that the planets in this sector were merely the sector's name with a few more letters at the end." His concentration on his task was so intent that she wasn't sure he'd even detected the heavy sarcasm in her voice.  
  
"Hey, maybe I'll just go around naked. Would that be sleeveless enough for you?"  
  
Finally, her acting husband looked up. "Perhaps that was Harper's true intention all along." Beka threw her hands up and turned on the holoscreen. A grimace crossed her face when the picture came into focus. "Ugh, sci-fi. It's all forehead aliens with their universal translators and beam-me-ups." She purposely ignored the fact that Harper had designed a teleporting machine that did just that. "And morals. Did I mention I hate morals?" The holoscreen presented dozens of images as Beka clicked through the channels. The best she could find was something she didn't hate. "So why do you want me sleeveless?"  
  
Judging by his expression, one might easily conclude that she'd just asked him why mudfoots hated Nietzscheans. "Your helix. If you insist on wearing that ridiculous...thing, the least you could do is display it properly."  
  
Right. "Ah, so this is about you having a proper little Nietzschean wife?" She didn't know whether it would be wise to pursue this conversation, but since when was Beka Valentine wise, anyway? "Well, in case it's not completely obvious, I'm neither proper, nor terribly Nietzschean. I won't even start on the 'wife' part."  
  
"A blind man could infer that," he rumbled. "And it's not about me having a proper Nietzschean wife, as you put it." He sounded suddenly weary. "It's about what is expected of us." Just as abruptly, his voice was back to its usual lazy accent. "And you are more...properly Nietzschean than you know."  
  
A face flashed in Beka's mind and she rose, pivoting on her heel, ready to storm out. "What, is that supposed to be a compliment?"  
  
Tyr must have heard the heat in her voice, for her craned her neck to watch her closely. "If there is something you wish to discuss..."  
  
"Later," she said quietly. "Just...later."  
  
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	4. Sappy Harper, but in small quantities

Woo-hoo got this bit done!  
  
Oh, and a note. I've found that . . .'s don't always show up on ff.net, so if you see a single . and a lowercase letter following, it's probably supposed to be a . . . I forgot what they're called **laughs**  
  
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Numero...Cuatro!  
  
Harper  
  
"Mothers of Soral III, lock up your daughters! Seamus Harper, High King of the high seas has arrived!" The engineer's cheerful self-aggrandizement cut off when he stepped down from the ramp extended from the flowing, silver curves of the Andromeda Ascendant. "Holy freakin cannoli," he whispered. "Dylan, Trance, you guys have got to see this place! Rommie, you too." He dropped his bags where he stood, rooted to the spot and slightly more carefully set his surfboard atop the luggage.  
  
The three named followed and absorbed the lush environment, looking rather less awed than their crewmember. "Well, it is beautiful," Dylan began uncertainly, sending a look to Rommie and Trance, silently asking for a suggestion. They shrugged.  
  
"Rommie, you've been to Earth. You've seen the, uh, shining seas and fruitful plains. This is it." He stared out toward the horizon, clearly incredulous of the vista set out in front of him.  
  
"Yes, Harper, I have," the android responded. "I suppose it's similar."  
  
"Similar?? It's the same freakin' place! I mean, this is Earth. Without the Nietzscheans and Magog...and the cities...and ghettos in the cities."  
  
"So basically, it's Earth, minus everything that makes it uniquely Earth?" Rommie's voice was devoid of sarcasm; she was truly confused.  
  
Harper just shook his head. {{AN: these people seem to do that an awful lot, don't they?}} How could he explain that the sunny flowers that dotted the landscape here reminded him of the little blossoms they called weeds but that he had loved anyway and had been all he could find to place on all the graves? How could he tell them about the scent of apple trees in bloom he so rarely caught back home that permeated the soft breezes here, improbable as that was. The Magog and Nietzscheans and filth that Rommie had seen and the others knew of didn't make Earth unique in the least. Instead, it was the vibrancy, the tiny displays of strength amid the horrors and violence that was everyday life, but which one was never completely accustomed to. Like the spicy clean scent of pine that occasionally wafted through the city, granting its human residents a moment's respite from the everlasting stench of sewers and death. He would always remember a totally unexpected thunderstorm that had crashed over Boston one previously still night and lit up the city like a fireworks display, including the Nietzschean ambush. Many more escaped torture and worse that night that would have been possible the peaceful evening they had predicted. The stuff of self-indulgent poets, perhaps, but it reminded Harper that if a solitary, blue-green gem could withstand centuries of torment, much of it brought of by the creatures who'd emerged from it, then by the divine, Seamus Harper could survive one more day on it.  
  
He gathered his baggage and ran to catch up with the others, stumbling over hidden rocks and low vegatation. "If the High King can't walk straight, I'm afraid he may be demoted to court jester," Trance threatened when he narrowly avoided breaking his skull on a knobby old tree root. The warm smile she gave him was fully at odds with her words, and oddly, this heartened him.  
  
"So tell me, my golden warrior princess, is there any chance ol' Harper'll get you out on the waves this time?" Purple Trance had avoided surfing like triangulum measles, but her complexion wasn't the only thing that had altered dramatically when she'd grown up, or whatever. All the answer he received was a very steady look. "No outright refusal, huh? Admit it, Trance, I'm wearing you down, slowly but surely!" A stone tried to catch his foot, and it very nearly succeeded. "Gah! Do you suppose they've heard of roads here?"  
  
Trance was assessing her surroundings, smiling very faintly. "I think it's wonderful." Her eyes twinkled, so like the old Trance that Harper temporarily lost his footing. That could also have been the tiny lizard that had just appeared under his left foot. "You're right about it looking like Earth, Harper." Her auburn braids bobbed as she nodded thoughtfully. "It really does." Harper's eyes widened as he realized what she had just implied. When has Trance been to Earth??  
  
A few more minutes passed as the group followed a well-worn dirt track, two of them offering up prayers that it led to some sort of civilization. One of these petitions to the Divine specified that it be one full of lonely, well-endowed women with a thing for cute blond surfers. Another was busy inspecting this alien world carefully, her deep eyes cataloguing everything they saw, and wondering how she'd never seen this place before. Unusual as it was, her musings were quite similar to the last being's; the latter trying to recall how they'd learned of this place and finding no answer. Of course, Rommie was analyzing and storing images of the planet for her main AI's database, seeking out signs of sentient life, and monitoring the life signs of Dylan and Harper. She'd given up on Trance a long time ago. Something beeped internally, and she zoomed in on the source of the sudden noise. "Dylan! There's a small city just ahead of us." She frowned at the data she was receiving. "It must be shrouded, somehow, for it to have escaped my sensors so far."  
  
Dylan shrugged, unconcerned. Still, the wheels and gears in his head began turning, already formulating and discarding various theories as to why this might be so. "Lead on, Rommie. I cannot wait to experience one of those Sasaran massages they told us about." For her part, Rommie wasn't terribly impressed by the notion. Massage parlors on small, out of the way worlds like this were often no more than legalised houses of ill repute.  
  
From behind them, Harper's voice piped up. "Don't worry, Rommie, you can lay your hands on me any time you like." Even without seeing him, she could picture the laviscious expression on his face. This was followed by a squeak she assumed was an 'ouch' or some other cry of pain. Perhaps Trance had thwapped him. Good for her.  
  
"Harper, do you remember those Magog I laid my hands on?" Had she been aboard the Andromeda... Aboard myself. How much sense does that make?, her AI would have reprimanded her about the habits she picked up from her crew, sarcasm among them.  
  
  
  
Dylan chuckled as Harper replied in a much less cocky tone. Of course, he knew she was kidding, but even so... "Right, Rommie. Just, uh, lead on."  
  
She did just that, and soon, they arrived at their destination. Trance seemed reluctant to leave the light forest, but no one else objected in the least. Even Harper's interest in the place was pushed to back of his mind when he saw the city nestled against a steep, verdant hill. The contrast between the bristly evergreens and the smooth domes and curving lines of the multi-hued buildings emphasized the beauty of each. "Hey, Rommie, this place remind you of anyone?"  
  
Now for most people, that question would make absolutely no sense, but Rommie could only nod. Trance, for her part, whispered, awe evident in her quiet alto. "It looks like the Andromeda." And so it did. Everything was constructed of sinuous arcs and sweeps, not a straight line in sight, except for the roads. Even those curved a bit, upon closer inspection.  
  
"Well," Harper quipped, "now we know where High Guard architects retired to after finishing their lovely Glorious Heritage class line." That brought people back to their senses with a vengeance. Rommie began to give a running commentary on each building as they passed them, chattering at a speed usually reserved for auctioneers and Sparky-ed mudfoots when one's outer wall was consisted of fullerene mesh, like her own. Dylan kept interjecting comments about how one or another edifice resembled something from Tarn-Vedra and succeeded at least in receiving irritated looks from Rommie. For Harper, that alone was worth anything that might happen on this trip. Trance, for her part, gaped in silence, her expression one Harper didn't think he'd ever seen on this incarnation of the...colorful pixie.  
  
While he freely admitted that this place definitely had caught his interest and that he wouldn't mind spending a few days with some of the head engineers, he would mind even less finding this resort of theirs and enjoying one of those massages. The man who had contacted them seemed to think them one of the central highlights of any visit here. "Uh guys?" he finally broke in, "if we don't check in soon, they'll give our reservations to a just married Nietzschean couple on honeymoon, and you know they won't be able to appreciate nearly as much as yours truly."  
  
Rommie frowned at him but agreed that they had better find their rooms before long and carefully navigated through the city, stopping at an eye- wrenching blue structure. "Hey Rommie, it matches your hair!" Harper exclaimed, skittering behind Trance for protection in case the android should decide to take offense at his observation. Her chocolate eyes narrowed but otherwise, she didn't react outwardly. Well, he had been the one to give her the nanobots for that function. She paused for a moment, probably accessing what little they'd been told of the city, and nodded.  
  
"This way."  
  
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 


	5. In Which We Hear Hints of Tyr's Naughty ...

Ooh, and if anyone finds any ref's, congrats! They're littered throughout here.cackle  
  
  
  
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Five-itty Five Five  
  
Beka  
  
Beka jumped like she'd sat on a pin when the short trill of the door chime interrupted the low drone emanating from the holoscreen. A smaller screen near the door showed a young woman with long, dark locks that shone auburn when hit by a stray beam of light. Eyes just as dark, emerald tinged instead of dusky crimson, gazed so steadily into the room that she would have sworn the other woman could see her. Beka unfolded herself from the oh- so-comfortable chair and opened the door to the security officer. The brunette reminded Beka very strongly of someone, but she couldn't quite put her finger on who. "Um, my husband's on our ship, checking...something," she shrugged, "He did not choose to confide in his beloved wife." As was becoming more and more usual recently, sarcasm dripped from her words.  
  
Shaidyna grinned knowingly. "If someone wanted to infiltrate Nietzschean society, he or she certainly couldn't rely on matrimony to learn their deep, dark secrets."  
  
Beka went to retrieve her bag from the bedroom, talking as she ambled there and back. "No, but they could go to a Tiradisene diplomatic gathering." Tyr would have had a fit had he heard what Beka had just said, but he wasn't here, now was he? That's what he got for gallivanting off, in her ship of all places, without telling her why. "It's a little creepy when one of the matriarchs tries to bond with you and introduces you to several women she thinks would make suitable wives for your husband." As she wadded her belongings into the grey duffel, she motioned for Shaidyna to sit, who did so with a grateful sigh.  
  
"I've always wondered how human/Nietzschean couples work that." A short burst of laughter filled the brief pause. "But then, I've always wondered how you work, well, everything."  
  
An unlady-like snort and a roll of her eyes suggested that Beka definitely didn't know the answer to that either. Quite possibly a simple lover's spat, Shaidyna reminded herself. She entertained the notion of asking about it but discarded the idea almost as quickly as it had come. "Someone should be here in a little while to show you your new rooms. I hope you like red satin."  
  
Beka's head snapped up. "Red satin?" She appeared equal parts nauseous and apprehensive about this turn of events.  
  
In an unexpected show of... embarrassment, Beka guessed, Shaidyna dropped her eyes to the cushion at her elbow. "Yeah, it was the best suite we had. It's, uh, usually reserved from another of our patrons, the Marchioness cen Haria Salenatyf" At Beka's blank expression, she elaborated, albeit hesitantly. "She's, uh, keeps men, you know? Starving artists, writers, um, philosophers, whatever. Or just those she finds particularly attractive. Anyway, uh, this is where they go for their anniversary getaways, so she demands that everything...everything lends itself to a, um, romantic atmosphere."  
  
Personally, Beka couldn't see why the subject flustered the woman so much. So a woman kept men? Whether a woman keeping a man or vice versa, it wasn't so uncommon to elicit that sort of reaction. "And what? She thinks red satin adds to the atmosphere?" The only thing mounds of red satin would do for Beka was hurt her eyes. "If I were that rich, I know I would keep me..." she trailed off. "What do you mean someone should be here? Aren't you the one who's supposed to show us to the honeymoon suite of lust and red satin?"  
  
Eyes nearly jet black met blue, laughter fading to a dry chuckle. "If I were actually here, yes I would. Unfortunately, I was instructed the clearest of terms that were I here, I would find myself suffering a number of unimaginable tortures if I were not fortunate enough to die the moment I was spotted on the premise."  
  
Comprehension replaced inquiry as the full implications of the former security officer's words struck Beka. "And who in their right mind would stay someplace like that? You may not be a Nietzschean, but even us plain old homo sapiens have that survival instinct." Her brow furrowed. "So then why...aren't you here?"  
  
Shaidyna shrugged minutely and shifted her eyes to the holoscreen. "I don't know which side you're on, with or against, but I thought either way I should tell you the reason I'm not here."  
  
The woman was circumspect, no doubt about that, but also incredibly kind to risk incurring the wrath of one of the largest crime syndicates ever to have existed, just to warn a couple of strangers about the hotel's less than legal management. She was saved from the necessity of thinking of an equally multi-layered and clever response by the arrival of the ever-cheery Tyr Anasazi.  
  
He took in the room's occupants with a quick sweep. "Are we leaving, then?" As he did from time to time, he addressed Beka while never even glancing in her direction. She felt she could almost see the line stretched tautly between the eyes of the other two.  
  
"So we were, my raspberry muffin of sweet, sweet love." Not even Tyr could resist tearing his eyes away and staring incredulously at Beka. "Only, they don't have anything available for us, so I guess we're going to have to find somewhere else." She detected a tightness in her shipmate's face which usually signaled suspicion, but she wasn't about to stay here. On the other hand, at least they knew who was in charge here... "Although now that I think about it, Shaidyna did mention something about... red satin?" She looked at the named questioningly, praying for the woman's understanding.  
  
A sudden smile brightened Shaidyna's face. "Yes, so I did. Tell me, have you heard of the Marchioness cen Haria Salentyf?"  
  
Abruptly, Tyr's expression morphed into one Beka knew she had never seen on the Nietzschean's normally tightly controlled face. As if someone had just played one of the universe's most classic practical jokes on him; Beka's own memory of the childhood prank still made her stomach churn. "What's wrong, sweetpea? Someone play the purple quirri fruit joke on you?"  
  
If humanly (or in this case, Uber-ly) possible, the look Tyr shot her was even more disgusted. " I know Corlecia very well." Hmph, as if that explained everything.  
  
Although Beka didn't find anything notable about the admission, Shaidyna apparently had. "Corlecia?" Beka was positive she saw a faint blush spread across the woman's coppery complexion. "There are very, very few who know that name. The only people I was even aware knew it were her..." Now the blush was unmistakable. An incongruous grin passed lightly over her face, which seemed to annoy Tyr to no end. Beka made a mental note to tease Tyr unmercifully about this Marchioness later, but her amusement was completely forgotten in the next couple of minutes.  
  
"And even fewer know the name Adolph Attila. So tell me, were you dismissed because of the incident earlier today or because that name was found among your private contacts? I tested your DNA."  
  
  
  
Beka mouthed the name Tyr'd said. Adolph Attila? Sounded decidedly Nietzschean, though the alliteration was almost cutesy, in a thoroughly creepy sort of way. And what DNA did he possess of... "The blood," she murmured. "Eww."  
  
"Ah, can't fool those computers of your, can I?" She tossed her head back at Beka, who was starting to resent all this talking over her head.  
  
"She's my wife, Shaidyna. She should know." I should know something, huh? Hello, hell, how's that ice sculpture coming along? After rising and considering them for a moment, Shaidyna inhaled deeply, approached Tall, Dark, and Generally Scary, and raised her forearm so that it formed a V with Tyr's. Beka nearly swallowed her tongue. The traditional Nietzschean greeting, that was.  
  
But inevitably, something even stranger was to follow. Shaidyna touched two fingers to Tyr's double helix. "Tyr Anasazi, you have committed to pass on the genes of Victoria and of Barbarossa, and of the entire Kodiak pride."  
  
In return, Tyr rubbed a thumb over her bicep where a double helix of her own would rest. To Beka, it all looked rather touchy-feely friendly, but she managed to restrain herself from speaking the caustic remark on the tip of her tongue. For a while, at least, she promised herself. "As have you for the genes of Gabrella and of Tomaron and of the entire Kodiak pride." Finally, he chose to acknowledge Beka's presence when he separated himself from Shaidyna and turned to his First Officer. "I present Shaidyna Ar'Semir, out of Gabrella by Tomaron, brother to the matriarch of the Kodiak pride." 


	6. How Not to Hit on an Androidand more!

Believe it or not, I do have a vague notion as to where this bit is going!  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*  
  
Wearin' my Six shooter  
  
Planetside  
  
The only word Harper could summon to describe the set of Rommie's full lips was...sulky. Not that he minded; she could have her fingers in her ears, her thumbs in her nose, and lipstick on her teeth besides, and she'd still be drop-dead gorgeous. "Well, well, well, running back to Seamus Z. Harper, are we? They all succumb to the incredible masculine charm in the end." Now, most people would not choose to aggravate an already annoyed android, but Seamus Harper had always walked on the wild side.  
  
"Harper, did you have to make this body so anatomically correct?" Her arms gestured up and down her slim form, exasperated with the effect it had on a high percentage of the male population. "Does a warship's avator truly require décolletage to function?"  
  
Harper looked slightly bewildered. "Dayco..." His eyes brightened as he realized what Rommie meant. "Oh! Hey, all I did was construct you to look exactly like holo-Rommie, and if that means daycollegette..." he sighed the sigh of noble self-sacrifice, "well, that just meant more work for me." Somehow, Rommie didn't buy it. "And you have to admit, it worked on those freaky Commonwealth kids." That statement, along with the grin he failed to conceal, utterly ruined any façade of nobility.  
  
"Hmph. If one more person offers to buy me a drink, I swear..." her eyes narrowed as she heard someone approaching.  
  
"Hey guys, next round's on me."  
  
Harper grinned wickedly. "Hey, boss! Rommie was just telling me what she was going to do to the next guy who offered to buy her a drink!" He merrily crunched on a handful of mini-pretzels from a basket at the neighboring table.  
  
A passing waiter glared and swooped in to snatch the basket from Harper's fingers. "If you want some, you must pay!" At the sight of a certain young android, his dark scowl melted into a warm, suggestive smile. "Aah, but no one ever finishes these anyway, and I hate to let anything go to waste." He checked out Rommie so thoroughly that she wagered her could tell her her waist size, bra size, shoe size, and age to the month, all before relinquishing the pretzels to a delighted Harper. Well, her age were she human, at least.  
  
  
  
"Hey, you should come on shore leave with us more often, Rommie. Just bat your eyes and breathe a little deeper, and ow!" He choked on the pretzel he was eating as he demonstrated his instructions when Rommie kicked his shin. He looked beseechingly at Dylan who had just sat down, but the latter just chuckled at his engineer's misfortune.  
  
"There's one woman I would hit on after a Nietzschean, and that's an android. It's your own fault, Harper."  
  
He stared googly-eyed at his captain. Well, one of his captains. Since when did Dylan talk about hitting on women? In his experience, he didn't need to do a thing for the ladies to fall in line. In any case, he had to admit that it was sound advice. "I don't know, Boss. I always kinda wondered about you and that hot Sabra princess. Think she had a thing for you."  
  
Rommie studied Dylan closely, suddenly curious. That Sabra trollop's husband had once said something very odd to Dylan that seemed to suggest something. She didn't prefer to dwell on what that something might be. "That woman? The only person she didn't refer to by some sort of slur was me, and I'm sure she could have, had she time to think of one."  
  
Dylan tried much too hard to act nonchalant, which obviously signified that something had happened. "Oh, well, you know how Nietzscheans can be." At Harper's and Rommie's disbelief of his casual demeanor, he added a wide- eyed, "What?"  
  
The waiter returned with another Weissbrau for Harper, a Milky Way Mixer for Dylan, and a smooth line for Rommie. Or so she guessed, but something behind them startled the man so much that he dumped the drinks on the table without a care if they survived the trip and skittered back to the bar without a word. Whatever it was, Rommie was inclined to thank it.  
  
Harper dove to save his beloved brew while Dylan and Rommie spun around to assess the situation and determine the threat of whatever had affected the waiter so. Observing the similarity of his captain's and the ship's android's reaction, Harper tossed back nearly a third of the former's drink. He was readying an innocent expression and excuse for the depleted state of Dylan's Milky Way Mixer when he noticed that although several patrons eyed his friends with some curiousity, none dashed madly about as had their server. His gaze swung to the object of the man's panic and found Trance, padding in silently, twin blades drawn. More eyes fastened on her, but her air was not violent as much as simply watchful. Expectant.  
  
Soon enough, all three were seated with Harper, who joyfully discovered that Dylan never noticed the reduced amount of liquid in his glass. "Trance, are you all right?" Rommie's voice was concerned, for more than one reason. "I may not be able to tell whether you're alive from one minute to the next, but I do know worry when I see it." This unique woman had shown unusual abilities to predict the future, or at least guess with uncommon accuracy, and when she was worried, it was often with very good cause.  
  
Trance shook her auburn braids but did not stop examining the room to the last detail. "I'm fine. It's just that I've never seen this place or even heard of it. It's...strange." Her daggers eased themselves back into matching sheathes, hands hovering nearby.  
  
Deliberately, she changed the subject; Rommie's expression was far too inquisitive for comfort. "I wonder how the happy couple's doing in the Lesser Magellanic Cloud." The reactions of the other three was exactly what she'd desired. That is, they'd completely forgotten about her seemingly inexplicable wariness, all save Rommie, but the A.I. wasn't going to harbor suspicious notions like Harper or possibly Dylan might.  
  
"All I know is they're either gonna come back like this," Harper crossed his first two fingers, "or one of 'em's gonna be-" he drew his index finger across her throat in a quick, slashing motion. "Whatever happens, at least it should be entertaining."  
  
Dylan raised an eyebrow at the shorter man. "You mean they're not already...together?" Trance chuckled as she imagined him trying to explain to Tyr and Beka why he sent them in particular on this mission after their return to the Andromeda. "Uh-oh." He followed Harper's example and took a draught of his drink. He blinked at his glass when he discovered it empty.  
  
"In his predictably unintelligible and overly-dramatic manner, Harper pretty much hit that one on the head." Her delicate features twisted oddly. "Uh, first sarcasm, now metaphors." It was spoken softly enough that no one but Trance had any idea she'd said anything.  
  
"Excuse me? First I find out those two aren't a couple, then you tell me they'll either come back as one or not at all?"  
  
Rommie shook her head. A ray of light filtered through her blue locks, temporarily filling her vision with a sapphire glow. "As usual, Harper over- simplified things. However, I have noticed increased levels of adrenaline as well as a rise in hormones generally associated with physical attraction when they spend prolonged periods of time together. Unless they can resolve whatever issues they have with one another," about as likely as Harper resolving his, she thought, but refrained from saying that aloud, "it may be a matter of which one is fortunate enough to escape alive." Dylan looked so worried that she almost regretted her attempt at humor.  
  
"So it really was hand to hand combat," he murmured wonderingly. 


	7. If It's Better than Innuendo, I Don't Kn...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I Want to Hit my Sister When She Watches Seventh Heaven (no offense to those who like it!)  
  
Beka could only shake her head. Well, she could also refuse to leave the bathroom, or take her chances and jump out the window to the nearby alley, but the first would accomplish nothing, and with the second, she ran the risk of someone else seeing her in this.thing. A band of densely woven, navy blue lace barely the width of her two hands together covered the essentials portions of her torso, while a silken sheath of the same azure layered until flimsy scraps of less opaque lace half-way decently hid her legs. Decently, that was, until she stood, when it proceeded to cling and very accurately outline her bottom half. Not having pants on irked her enough, but this!  
  
"I saw that outfit, and I know I've seen less of you in the gym." Tyr's words from the bedroom were hardly sympathetic.  
  
To distract him as much as possible from the sight of her and the hated nightwear, she began speaking as soon as she opened the door. "Tell me, why do Nietzschean women, with the notable exception of one Mrs. Charlemange Bolivar, feel a compelling need to bond with me? I mean, one I could write off as. I don't know, defective genes or something, but three? Just a little creepy." Her not-so-subtly displayed curves were under the bedsheets quickly enough to impress Tyr, as well as amuse him. The woman could breeze around in snug gym shorts and a tight black tee with slits cut around the ribs and even straddle him as they practiced hand to hand combat without blinking, but give her satin and lace, and she became worse than Romaron nun, cloistered from men since birth.  
  
"You mean Madame Elimenne was not the first?" Almost immediately, the representative of the Al-Sharif pride had latched onto Beka like a mother reunited with her long-lost daughter and determined to pass along her knowledge and wisdom if it killed the both of them. Something about Beka's headstrong approach to life and the Pride's especially dominant matriarchy, from what he'd gathered.  
  
"Sadly, no. That cousin of yours," she was still a bit miffed about that revelation, though she wasn't sure why, "and another woman I knew." Her tone softened at the end, and Tyr caught the past tense. He wondered if this was the "later" she'd refused to talk about earlier. She raised her eyes to him sitting at the foot of the bed, then lowered them as she gazed at nothing. "Don't get your blades in a tangle, but she was Drago-Kazov. Pavarti Quechua, female fighter pilot for the Dragan Empire. A nice way of saying infertile cannon fodder who could only hope not to shame her family any more than she already did by being born."  
  
Tyr ran a hand through his dark hair. "Would you prefer her parents had killed her at birth?" He knew he sounded harsh, but he had an idea as to where this would lead.  
  
As expected, her eyes flashed dangerously in the fluorescent light. "I would prefer that she was allowed a normal life, but that's too much to ask of you people, isn't it? You talk about how superior you all are, but you just waste half of that supposedly superhuman population and leave them pregnant and barefoot at home, while those you do let go out and actually do something are really only buying time until they're shot out of the sky and can't shame their families anymore."  
  
Tyr made his way forward on the bed until he loomed directly over her. His voice was low and, Beka could barely credit, tender. She wondered if she were dying, and no one told her. "You have just answered your own question. I cannot speak for anything with complete certainty, but I believe they see something of themselves in you, or what they could be. You are.beautiful, intelligent, and most importantly a survivor, such as any Nietzschean female aspires to be, but also independent and spontaneous, as they can never be."  
  
Beka looked up in amazement, anger fading quickly. "Wow. I didn't think I'd actually get an answer to that. Thanks, Dr. Freud." She sighed. "I can still see her face on the viewscreen, and I remember thinking that no Nietzschean should be allowed to look that much like me."  
  
Something whished almost inaudibly on the windowpane, and before it even registered as unnatural to Beka, Tyr had slipped from the bed and now stood flush against the wall, weapon aimed for the glass pane. The sash rose mysteriously, and a foot appeared through it so quickly that Tyr hadn't time to fire a single shot before the seemingly disembodied leg kicked the gun to the carpet. Joke's on you, Beka though smugly. While Tyr had been all gung-ho to take the sneaky, assassin approach to the intrusion, Beka's good old-fashioned hide-behind-a-large-object-and-shoot method could've nailed the intruder as soon as more of it came into view. Her weapon was trained on the figure, but she let her arms drop when she could fully make out the stranger's visage.  
  
She grinned. "And you people claim you're the superior race."  
  
Tyr, on the other hand, grunted sourly, inarticulate for once, while Shaidyna's answering smile was every bit as amused as Beka's. "Why do you think I masquerade as one of you guys?" By this time, Tyr was reduced to a shake of the head and an eyeball roll.  
  
The long, jagged scars on the woman's forearms led Beka to believe that the reason for her lack of bone blades was much graver than that. That she could make light of.whatever had caused those wounds raised her that much higher in Beka's estimation.  
  
"If you are both finished," Tyr rumbled from the other side of the room, "I believe we have more important things to do that compare notes on the shortcomings of the Nietzschean people."  
  
Awww, someone's just mad cos someone's wife might've had to save someone's six. "Six" was a term Beka had just learned and found herself quite enjoying it. She'd have to find a way to casually squeeze it into conversation. "See, that's why I married him. How many other Nietzscheans do you know can actually admit that their people aren't perfect?"  
  
Shaidyna's reply was directed at Beka, but she looked straight at Tyr the entire time. "It really is a pity that he isn't the one destined to lead us."  
  
Beka couldn't have missed that look had she been stone-blind. "True, but that's no reason to believe he won't have any influence on whoever is that Drago of yours born again." Shaidyna's face became too blank too quickly not to further arouse Beka's suspicions.  
  
"Mmm, he does seem to get around enough for that." Now amusement flitted lightly over exotic coppery features and the tense indication of frustration settled on Tyr's slightly darker.  
  
"All right, honey, we'll be serious now. How do we sneak away from here, get to my ship, fly it away from Planet of the Mafia, and make it back home without out Dheran friends suspecting a thing?"  
  
Shaidyna nodded at the window from whence she'd just come. "They monitor every square inch of this place, but if you do it just right, you're on over a dozen cameras at once, which confused the hell out of 'em. They usually send a couple of guards up, but they won't know where to direct them, and between you two, I'm sure you'll pick 'em off before they pose any real sort of threat. Of course, having done this once already, I wouldn't recommend doing it more than absolutely necessary, so you should only take what you can carry and very little of it-the less weight the better."  
  
Beka could have cheered. "So you mean I'll have to leave behind most of Rommie's honeymoon wardrobe?" Shaidyna could not know who Rommie was. "Maybe there is a higher power, after all. Long sleeves, here I come." She realized she was still in the NC-17 holoflick nightwear and sat down so hard she nearly rolled clean off the bed. "You guys can.work out the details while I go put on something a very very little bit less obscene." A mismatched cloud of fabric seemed to envelope her as she scooped practically every unworn article of clothing from the drawers and hauled it all to the bathroom.  
  
She guessed the other two must have contrived considerable amusement from the mutterings that wafted though the heavy door that hid her from them, by the chuckles she swore she heard. Ungodly expensive scraps (to Beka's eyes) of finely woven, lushly colored silk and whatnot flew to every corner of the ivory room, followed by curses and invectives that would have made even Harper blink. A part of her mind automatically priced the garments, and she began to ponder bringing them along and discreetly finding a way to pawn them off at an out-of-the-way drift on the way back. With a sigh, she decided against it; doing so would only leave more of a trail for the Dherans to follow.  
  
Finally, she settled on a leather outfit with a definite domination theme. Though much of her chest, back, and stomach showed around the almost wide straps that made up the top, she told herself firmly that what did not show was suitably and opaquely covered, which was more than she could say for many of her other options. At least she was in pants. When she left the bathroom, she could almost hear the rock music announcing her leather-clad entrance.  
  
"Who's your mama??" she demanded as she entered the bedroom where the other two still discussed the finer points of the escape.  
  
Shaidyna bit her lips and suddenly became very interested in her hands as Tyr's eyes widened. He opened his mouth to reply with what Beka was sure would be a characteristically sarcastic rejoinder, but he closed it and contented himself with an expressive toss of his hair, all the while muttering something Beka didn't quite catch about an Oedipal something or other. She shrugged.  
  
The thing was shockingly easy to maneuver in, Beka discovered as she crouched down to throw some last minute items into her duffel. "So guys," she asked when no one volunteered anything, "what's the plan?"  
  
The plan turned out to be refreshingly simple, rather like one she herself might have come up with. She suspected it had been more Shaidyna's than Tyr's. It seemed to Beka that the Divine had doled out more than the usual dose of common sense allotted to Ubers for this woman. Tyr was to make his own way to Beka's ship while she and Shaidyna made theirs together, doubtless because Shaidyna knew the cameras but not the location of the Maru, while Beka knew the latter but not the former. Or so she told herself as she tried to ignore the nagging voice in her head that insisted they'd arranged it like that so they wouldn't be leaving the poor, helpless kludge on her own.  
  
After describing the route he was to take in great detail to Tyr, something Beka thought she could have followed just as well herself, he disappeared out the window frame.  
  
"Hard to believe someone so big could manage to keep so quiet," Beka remarked after that someone was well out of earshot.  
  
"Mmm." Shaidyna's nod was absent-minded, but her next question certainly wasn't. "Tell me, when we arrive at your ship, will I find separate quarters for you and your.husband?" The hesitation, if nothing else, revealed her true question.  
  
Miraculously, Beka somehow kept her jaw from dropping straight to the floor was her mind raced. "Uh, actually, yes. You see, it's not exactly a luxury cruiser, as you'll soon find out for yourself, so, uh," even if we wanted to, Beka stopped herself from saying just in time, "yeah, we do have our own quarters." The next part she wouldn't have added for a million thrones if she even suspected it might possibly get back to any of Andromeda's crew. "That's not to say we don't share from time to time." Her voice was so loaded with innuendo, she didn't think even the purple Trance could have mistaken her meaning. Shaidyna caught it, and Beka hoped the other woman's stay on the Maru would not have to be one of those times. 


	8. The Sea and the Siren's Sweet Seduction

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  
  
RATE number EIGHT or be fish BAIT!  
  
Harper  
  
The wave loomed higher and higher and rushed forward at a terrifying speed toward the shore, toward its inevitably violent end. Soon, cerulean and foam filled Harper's vision, and the scents of salt and fish surrounded him, and he could well imagine Trance's expression at his state when he returned to the hotel. He wondered idly if she would wrinkle her nose and wave a hand in front of her face as Purple Trance had always done. For the tenth or thousandth time she her mysterious...departure, he wracked his brain for an answer as to the location of the violet incarnation of his alien friend.  
  
According to Beka, she had definitely gone somewhere. Tesseracts, he began as he always did when he hopped aboard this particular train of thought. Also, as habitually occurred when he pondered the once-tailed girl's final destiny, he shivered as he remembered the bizarre sensation of walking the Andromeda with the tesseract generator-betweeen dimensions was how he thought of it. He hated to think of either Trance in that washed-out, eerie...  
  
An almost imperceptible shift in the motion of the board under his feet and Harper was thrown into the fast-approaching speed at literally a breakneck velocity. Instinctively, he tucked his blond head hard against his bright Hawaiian shirt while relaxing the rest of him and twisting himself, rather like a cat, though far less gracefully. All this was meant to relieve his head of as much of the impact as possible. Any surfer worth the title and the salt he or she rode, Harper had learned before anything else, knew how to fall and ultimately land without breaking his or her skull.  
  
Even with his years of experience and an adrenaline rush more effective that a case of Sparky, Harper was blinking and seeing stars for several minutes after his painful encounter with the by now shallow floor of the ocean.  
  
A large number of beach-goers had gathered 'round to watch the mudfoot effortlessly skim and ride the tsunami-sized crests (Maybe, he reflected, not quite that size but pretty freakin close), and now, every single one cheered Harper as he pulled himself spluttering from the wet, hard swirls of sand and unsurely tottered away. Even as tight bands of fullerene tightened around his lungs each time he took a breath, the engineer managed a cocky grin and acknowledging waves and wheezing shouts of victory as the crowd parted to let him stagger past uninhibited.  
  
"An' hey," he slurred an hour later, "if y'don' got a Common, Comwulf," he paused to finish yet another glass of his beloved Weissbrau and pound the bar to signal his desire for another, "preddy pink ship," hiccup, "mebday {medbay, if ya didn't catch that, readers!}, er, whatever, even if ya don' have one of 'em, y'can always beat th' pain th' ol'fashun way!" This he punctuated with a mind-numbing gulp of his beer, about a full half of his latest glass.  
  
His new companions roared in approval, much in the same manner of the earlier bunch of admirers on the beach. "But tha's not th' bes' of it. You shou' see wha' I can do wi'this thing." He attempted to indicate his dataport with the bottle he'd just acquired from one of his new friends. His voice lowered almost to a normal conversational level as he pretended to confide in his listeners. "I bet I could get all yer tabs back t'nuthin', 'f I had enough time."  
  
The responses to his declaration ranged from unmitigated delight to outright incredulity and blatant skepticism. Several shouted that the little man had hit his head too hard when he fell off that stick of his. Naturally, Harper felt morally obligated to defend both his surfboard and his mental state, the latter becoming more doubtful as he swayed uncertainly on his barstool.  
  
"No, I'm seri...serru...I mean it! Jus' plug me in t'a comp, comt, counting thingy, an' I'll show you! Bartenner," he called, "where's your counting comp(hic)ter? I gotta check my, uh, my 'ccount." He winked hugely at his audience who laughed appreciatively at his deception and jostled those who didn't laugh quite enough. The woman tending bar eyed the short blond askance but shrugged and directed him to a terminal in the corner. She made a mental note to warn her employees about that one.  
  
With his posse close on his heels, Harper unsteadily made his way in the indicated direction, managing to stand mostly with the support of the tables he passed. After several stabs in the general area between his head and shoulders, he found himself in the ethereal world of cyber reality. As was common when he was unusually tired, distracted, or drunk as the case may be, he flickered, parts of him disappearing or streaking {not like he's nekkid, sillies}. It all made for a queasy sight when he looked down at himself.  
  
Nevertheless, as he had no real body swimming in alcohol to control, he focused on his goal with surprising ease and accuracy. First of all, the young, inebriated supergenius located the door controls and concentrated on telling the computer to open and close them in rapid succesion for several minutes. Briefly, he returned to his physical self and grinned lopsidedly at the impressed noises and accolades before leaving it again for the faintly glowing lines and precise, intricate matrices of the cyber world.  
  
He set his mind on keeping his image steady, as his next task would be a sight more difficult than playing with doors. With a feather touch, he opened the financial files and simply studied them a moment. If there was too much action, especially in the bar computer's monetary sector, someone would notice and shut it down temporarily, or worse, try to purge it. If the purger knew what he or she was doing, Harper could be caught here until the computer system voluntarily let him go or someone forcibly removed the jack from his cerebral port. Seldom a pleasant experience either way.  
  
Technically, Harper wasn't using his eyes at all, but he squinted anyway, a long-time habit borne of many drunken nights and hung-over mornings like the one he knew he'd have in a few hours. Obviously, the bar's owner had set a lock over the files, but it was a simple coded barrier, easily broken with a prod here and a careful spin there. Now he had to act quickly, before somebody official tried to open or check the account. Salaries, utilities and rent, supplies, and... Harper felt the alarm begin just before it actually did, leaped a foot in the... whatever and hastily accessed that system and performed the rough equivalent of silencing an alarm clock with a missile barrage, a bit unnecessarily forceful but perfectly capable of shutting down the alarm.  
  
Before he returned to himself and after he'd opened the credit files and wiped them clean with a villainous cackle, Harper decided to investigate an odd flashing he'd noticed in a shadowy area near the financial records. It was hidden behind what felt like a glass barrier to Harper; he could see through the structure, but something was blocking his way any further.  
  
After a few seconds of delicate poking at the transparent wall, he discovered a doorway of sorts that would lead to the bar owner's private files. She had a halfway decent firewall in place-it would take Harper at least half an hour to work through it, and the chance of setting another alarm off was great enough that he wouldn't attempt it unless he knew of something especially interesting back there. As he tapped the glass experimentally, he found he could make out a message behind the bright pulses that had first attracted him here. Secure, he saw. Keep secure...message...keep secure...search...keep secure...  
  
Suddenly, he was snatched back to the real world with a jolt. Ooh, whiplash he moaned silently. He removed the jack as he opened his eyes to ask what the hell they were thinking; he wasn't some... and promptly tripped over his feet. Right, the Weissbrau. Damn the sweet, seductive liquor!  
  
" 'f yer all done tossin' me 'round," he tried to whisper to the still congregated crowd, "y'might find a ple... pleasy... happy surprise when you go t'pay." Cries of joy erupted from the throats of many, and Harper fell over again just as he'd begun to rise, clutching his head. "Hey, a liddle consid...considra..consid'ration, here!" Shouts died to murmurs as a young woman, not much taller than Harper if that, made her very forceful way through the conglomeration. An iron grip seized the blond's ear and mercilessly pulled him up.  
  
"Whaddya doin? If y'don' like..." A blue lock of chin-length hair swung as his tormenter tossed her head in exasperation. "Oh, Rommie, wha's goin' on? I jus' found the funniest thing over there-"  
  
"Harper, what are you doing and what," her clipped voice rose, and the object of her interrogation winced, "is that smell??"  
  
Flailing for a solid something to keep himself from sagging to the floor, Harper accidently brushed Rommie's frontside. Her eyes popped, and she immediately released her grasp. Harper banged his elbow on a nearby table and nearly fell bodily beneath it before sloppily righting himself. Sort of.  
  
"It's a condimation of fish, salt, an' Weissbrau, nectar o'th'gods."  
  
"Lovely." Abruptly, her voice sweetened to the tone one might use with a particularly recalcitrant (and more than a little slow) four-year old child. "Harper, why don't we go upstairs and get you all nice and tucked in, so you try to sleep off this oh-so-charming intoxication of yours?"  
  
Even in his current state, Harper caught on to the sarcasm. "Yes, teacher. Can I have a cookie, too?" She reclaimed her hold on his auditory organ, and he yelped. "Ow, alright, no cookie!"  
  
~~~~~~~~~~~ 


	9. Girl Talk and Kinky Ubers

One of my favorite shows of all time is Deep Space NINE  
  
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  
  
"...although, I have to tell you, your cousin, or whatever he is to you, wasn't always the most charming dinner companion. The first time we ever, uh, went out, he claimed he would never in a million years, enter into a relationship with a lowly kludge." Beka paused and considered her next words. It was a bit difficult not to mention the Andromeda in an innocuous slip. "Well, not exactly in those words, but that's what it boiled down to."  
  
Shaidyna could well imagine Tyr Anasazi making an ass out of himself like that. He'd always had peculiar notion of Pride and Nietzschean duties, strange even for a Kodiak. That might have something to do with what the Matriarch had told him about his genes, of course, but still. Since her harsh crash into the bitter reality of an uncaring universe all those years ago, Shaidyna had learned that the former possesors of Drago's bones had been regarded by many as slightly...not right. "It would take most women years to make a Nietzschean male forget all that purity dogma drilled their skulls since infancy, if she ever did."  
  
Beka emitted a very unlady-like (but very Beka-like) snort at that as she checked every sensor she dared turn on yet again. Most women aren't Valentine women, she thought with an odd sort of pride. "I swear, if that boy does not get his bone-bladed self in here soon, he's gonna learn exactly why Al-Sharif men are known for their punctuality!" This tirade she delivered under her breath as her sensors came up with nothing, but Shaidyna's enhanced ears caught and understood every word as if Beka had announced them on the ship's comm.  
  
Beka chuckled at her bewildered expression as she explained. "Our cover was assistant...assistants, I guess... to the diplomat from the nearby Al- Sharif system, and the woman who actually was the ambassador, uh, took to me like a thief to Pierpont Drift. Apparently, pride Al-Sharif has a very powerful matriarchy, and I guess she thought I fit that. I can't imagine why.  
  
Anyway, since then, whenever the love of my life and light of my heart does anything to annoy me, which he seems to have some kind of talent for, I tell him that if he doesn't stop whatever it is, he'll learn why Al-Sharif men are known for so-and-so. The first I said it, Madame Elimenne found it uproarious and could barely stop laughing."  
  
Whether 'I can't imagine why" was spoken in jest or not, Shaidyna had to smile. Tyr would glare and grumble, but he would do much of what this fiery woman might ask of him. Kodiak men, she'd also learned, taught and were taught to respect and value women, as they were literally the source of life as well as its goal. Or some such male Nietzschean claptrap. "So tell me, how do you plan to teach him this most admirable quality?" Her warm and amused tone was at odds with the formal and almost stilted language.  
  
Laughter saturated Beka's words. "I haven't thought that far ahead. In fact, I've never really had to carry out any of my threats, which might be a pity. Some of the madame ambassador's advice for," she waved her hand in small circles as she hunted the word, "settling upstart husbands sounded very, um," Beka hesitated again as she worked her mouth before continuing, "I mean, I had no idea Nietzscheans...I mean, I don't hear of anyone doing that much anymore." All the while she eyed Shaidyna as if that particular member of the species "did that" and could maybe enlighten her as to the reason.  
  
She couldn't. "Lucky for you that you two didn't try to pose as Altreus. They come as close as any of us to patriarchy." A grin overspread her features. "Tyr would be threatening to teach you why Altreus women are known for their patience."  
  
Beka's eyes widened in horror at the notion. "Just let him try that..." Her fingers danced close to the ship's weapons systems.  
  
In the brief silence while Beka plotted what horrible sort of demise would befall any man who tried teaching her anything like that, Shaidyna drew a deep breath and gathered her courage. "I hope you don't mind me saying so," at which Beka's head snapped up, daring the speaker to insult her how she would, "but there's kind of an...air of unrelieved...sexual tension around you and Tyr." Her woried face seemed to wait for the human female's explosion at the implication.  
  
Instead, she got an exhaled breath of relief and a short laugh. "For a second, I thought you were going to say something about my ship." Shaidyna might not be a typical Nietzschean, but she did have a healthy survival instinct, and the thought of insulting the ship this woman loved almost as a child barely flitted through her brain. "We've been pretty busy, what with keeping out of Dheran hair and off their radars, all while trying to keep up the appearance of being," 'a happily married couple', she wanted to say but went instead with, "from a Pride I've never even heard of." She sighed. "I swear, you try to keep cool with that..."  
  
"hunk of burning love?"  
  
Beka's eyebrows jumped. "...sleeping not three feet from you, and under silk sheets, no less." Smooth, fair skin furrowed as she stared at Shaidyna, disbelief clear on her face. "Since when do Nie...does anyone say hunk of burning love??"  
  
~~~~~~~  
  
and now...a preview!  
  
~~~~~~~  
  
"Please, Rommie."  
  
"No."  
  
"Come on!"  
  
"No."  
  
"You need it, I want it, let's do it!"  
  
"Harper!" And he had the temerity to look wide-eyed at her like he could not possibly fathom why she would want to glare at him so.  
  
  
  
"All right, well, maybe I'll go and see how my new friends are doing without me, at the large and extensive bar downstairs." By his tone, he was nothing but eager to repeat the experience which had left him making all sorts of suffering sounds until just an hour or so ago. He still couldn't look directly at the light fixtures without wincing. 


	10. Back This Funky Train Up!

Oh TENenbaum, oh TENenbaum!  
  
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  
  
"No."  
  
"Come on!"  
  
"No."  
  
"You need it, I want it, let's do it!"  
  
"Harper!" And he had the temerity to look wide-eyed at her like he could not possibly fathom why she would want to glare at him so.  
  
"All right, well, maybe I'll go and see how my new friends are doing without me, at the large and extensive bar downstairs." By his tone, he was nothing but eager to repeat the experience which had left him making all sorts of suffering sounds until just an hour or so ago. He still couldn't look directly at the light fixtures without wincing.  
  
  
  
Rommie pursued her lips and readied another argument but gave up before she began. It couldn't hurt, she conceded to herself, and she might even get something useful out of it. "Okay, Harper, you can do your check-up. I think I would know if I needed it, but if it'll keep you from becoming Seamus the Human Sponge again." she sighed melodramatically. An hour to be wasted. Harper might be able to down three or thirty drinks in that time, but she, even without her main A.I. network, could process an entire planet's history, develop over a trillion ways to avert every major war, natural, or man-made disaster to bring instead peace and prosperity to all, and render the entire thing into perfect haiku form (or sonnet, if she felt like a little variety) in every language ever spoken in any of the worlds or habitats of the Systems Commonwealth. After the two years with the Andromeda's present crew, she could probably do it all in dirty limericks as well. There once was a eukaryote from Chi'xian.. Definitely too much influence from the crew.  
  
  
  
"I'm an engineer, not a doctor, but if you insist." Harper extracted a thin, needle-like tool from his belt and advanced on her like a Neanderthal hoping to skewer the woolly mammoth in his sight. She sat down on a nearby chair and closed her eyes in her android equivalent of sleep. Suddenly, she was inside herself, or inside her mind at least, something she never liked to reflect on.  
  
  
  
She tapped a pixilated foot impatiently as Harper joined her in her neural network. As always, his projection was somehow more.perfect than his usual appearance. Typical. "Rommie, you are one of the few girls I can honestly say."  
  
  
  
".is just as gorgeous on the outside as I am on the inside. I know. And you need to find some new clichés."  
  
  
  
Harper bent to inspect a tangled mess of glowing lines. "Ah, you wound me, sweetheart." His habitual bantering tone was half-hearted; apparently he'd found something very much of interest. "Hey, Rommie, remember how you couldn't detect this place until we ran into it?"  
  
  
  
Of course she remembered. She recalled what he had worn the first time he'd stepped aboard the Andromeda and told him so. She realizes she was acting rather snappish, but the engineer could always do with a little ego reduction, especially after yesterday. That such a compact person with his fragile health could consume that much Weissbrau without succumbing to alcohol poisoning astounded her.  
  
  
  
"Yeah, well, I don't think it was that they had any shield or anything around here," something tingled inside her as Harper played with the mess of systems, "but some kind of signal emitted from--I don't know, somewhere-- interfered with one of your processing centers." An arc of blue appeared from one of her internal defenses and shocked Harper soundly.  
  
  
  
She could immediately discern that he was unharmed but berated herself for her lax attention. She'd recognized it beginning before it zinged the young man just soon enough to reduce its charge to a less fatal level. Harper shook himself and continued working, every bit as enthusiastically as he had before the encounter with her defense system. "Whoever designed this knew what he was doing," he commented, still in that absent tone. She wondered if he meant her defenses or the disrupting signal affecting her. Probably the latter.  
  
  
  
Her projection squatted near Harper, becoming more and more curious in spite of herself about what he'd discovered. She really should know what was wrong with her own self, after all. Peering closely at the twisted strands, she winced. "Harper, how can I not feel that??"  
  
  
  
The named shook his head. "Whatever is keeping me from fixing you must be blocking the abnormal impulses from reaching your neural net." Cautiously, he approached the system that had zapped him earlier and lightly tapped one of the shining spheres that represented a signal juncture. "Can you feel that?"  
  
  
  
Rommie found this very disturbing, watching Harper muck around with various bits of mind and her utterly unaware of it. "No."  
  
  
  
Harper nodded as if he'd expected just that. "Okay, Rommie, can you disengage some of your security protocols? Actually, all of 'em. I think I can repair you, but I gotta have more access to your inner workings." The "I think" wasn't reassuring in the least, but Rommie assented. Now, not only could she not feel anything he did, she'd also given him very close to complete control over her most important systems. All she could do was watch and hope he was half the genius he claimed to be.  
  
  
  
"Ah-ha! Found the problem." Rommie saw it too, a dark shadow dulling several of the usually brilliant, pulsing nerves (as they would be in living beings, that is) that ran throughout her A.I. and body. She glared fiercely as the obscuring mass. "You know, that reminds me of something I saw earlier when I was." He looked at the young woman's image beside him, coughed, and trailed off. "It looks kinda familiar." He hoped he wouldn't have to tell her where he'd seen it's like, and if she did, he wanted to delay that moment as long as possible. With her defenses off, he could access and disable the clouding program much easier than that at the bar's computer. He grinned at the challenge.  
  
  
  
Several minutes passed during which Rommie neither saw nor felt any change in the slightest. Then, an extremely faint tremor seemed to pass through her, followed after a fraction of a second (approximately .0018182) by a searing bolt of agony. "Harper!!" She let her remonstration fade into silence, though she persisted in glowering at him, when she saw the misty barrier dissolve to nothing. "What did you do?"  
  
  
  
The blond engineer's grin was insufferably smug. "Seamus Harper, to the rescue one again. It really was a simple matter for a mastermind such as myself. Just a-"  
  
  
  
His self-acclamations were cut short as information poured into Rommie's now very active sensors. "This planet.it's run by the Dheran syndicate." Virtual brown eyes widened. "And they're looking for Beka and Tyr!"  
  
  
  
· · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · ·  
  
  
  
"They run the entire planet??" Dylan's face was a perfect picture of shock and outrage. He knew what had happened to the universe since the fall of the Commonwealth.the Old Commonwealth, as they called it more and more these days, with the slow rise of its modern incarnation, but sometimes, he couldn't quite believe it. A whole planet controlled by gangsters?! No, probably the whole system.  
  
  
  
"Correct. And they're desperately searching for Tyr and Captain Valentine." Naturally, Rommie did not waste time with emotions like righteous indignation and horror-which wasn't to say that she didn't have emotions at all, for he had seen her. and that was a train of thought he did not want to jump aboard at the moment.  
  
  
  
She'd quickly located and gathered the other three, slipping innocuously past the intangible shield that monitored everything within the main city and hid it from foreign sensors. Clever, but they hadn't had much experience with Commonwealth A.I.'s; once Rommie's neural net was free of the signal, she could not only sense as well as ever, but she could also passively view the happenings of the Dheran network as well. Ever since Harper broke the block around her sensory systems, she'd learned even more that made their departure a better and better idea. "About an hour ago," fifty six minutes and thirty point two eight nine seconds ago, but "about an hour" was close enough for her companions, "one of the higher-ups suggested we be found and...gently questioned. They'll leave us in one piece...more or less."  
  
  
  
Harper winced. That sounded way too similar to Nietzschean interrogation. He didn't know why an entire crime syndicate had turned out to search for him crewmates, but if they reminded him of Nietzscheans, they might give even Tyr a run for his money. One, two, or even a small Pride he could handle, but the Dherans were almost as infamous as the Dragans. And he didn't want to think about Beka in the hands of gangsters - she was way too loyal for her good sometimes and could be as proud and defiant as any Uber.  
  
  
  
"They know we're here, but not that we know anything, so we should be able to leave without too much of a problem." Meaning they would blast their way free, facing only two dozen light cruisers and possibly a planetary defense system.  
  
  
  
Trance had kept her own counsel while the rest had produced, debated, and ultimately rejected ideas for escape, but now she spoke up. "But what will we do after we're gone? Tyr and Beka don't have a Glorious Heritage class warship," understatement of the century, "and the Dherans seem to be concentrating most of their efforts on them. Even if they manage to get off that planet, how are we going to make contact with them?"  
  
  
  
Hmph. Harper definitely liked Purple Trance better. Maybe that wasn't quite fair, but Trance 2.0 had a much more pronounced tendency to see the dark side of the things. If Original Trance saw it too, well, at least she had kept it to herself.  
  
  
  
"All good points, but we'll worry about them when we can do something about it. For now, those two will have to take care of themselves." Dylan's voice was confidence epitomized, but he scrubbed her hand through his dirty blond hair and darted uncertain glances at the foliage around them. Clearly, he wished he could do something about it now.  
  
  
  
Rommie nodded firmly. "And if we don't leave soon, we won't be in a position to help ourselves." They really didn't have much of a plan: get back to the Andromeda, shoot anyone who tried to stop them on the ground, fly away at top PSL, and repeat step two until they somehow located Tyr and Beka. That part was a little fuzzier.  
  
At first, it seemed that their plan might go off without much of a hitch, the majestic forest around them silent of unnatural noises, save their own quick footsteps. Birds chirped, small animals skittered, and no large men with guns fired at the four figures ghosting through cool tree shadows. Then they reached the Andromeda.  
  
Rommie and Dylan had to forcibly shove one of the aft cargo doors open, {{A/N I have no idea which part "aft" is!}} as the main A.I. wasn't responding to either its avatar or its captain. The moment they stepped aboard, thankfully, Andromeda recognized them, so they wouldn't have to add an invigorating jog through the gauntlet of the ship's internal defenses to the day's misfortunes.  
  
The hologram that materialized in front of them looked distinctly annoyed that she hadn't heard them coming, which confirmed Harper's suspicions. The information barrier must affect every computer within some perimeter of the city, or perhaps it was planetwide. Either way, he'd have to jack into the Andromeda's A.I. network and purge the dampening signal. When he gallantly volunteered his services (and added a lascivious wink as he did so), Rommie turned and informed him in a withering tone that she could the same herself and faster, but she let him go anyway. After all, she had a daring rescue to plan. 


	11. I Know I'm Not the One with All the Luck

Looky, looky, got some of next chapter typed! It could stand alone as a chapter, I think, if a rather short one, so I feel confident about posting it...THEN LEAVING YOU HANGING!! MUA-HA-HA-HA-HA! Erm...*cough*...excuse me. I just have this to say... if you're one of those pple who scrolls down a bit past what you're reading to glance ahead (I do this rather too often), DON'T DO IT NOW!! I mean, you can, but it will develop so much better if you don't see the last bit coming *cackle* *sings* Joanne needs a beta, Joanne needs a beta! Oh! And if anyone here goes to the University of Missouri-Columbia E-MAIL ME!!! Please? All right, I'll stop...  
  
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~  
  
Eleventy-two! Minus the two.  
  
"All right, it's been two hours and then some, and my very attractive yet oh-so-tardy husband is nowhere to be found. Now, I don't know if Nietzschean women do this sort of thing, but I sure as hell don't plan to sit around and twiddle my thumbs while half of the Dheran syndicate is searching for the Maru and its renowned captain." She regretted those last words as soon as they left her mouth-all that time without a slip and now that. Oh well. Shaidyna wasn't likely to tattle on them, and come to think of it, there was no one she could tattle to who didn't already know her and Tyr's identities. Something about the irony that those trying to kill them (or so she assumed) knew more about her than the woman attempting to help them struck her just then, but Shaidyna spoke before she could ponder this revelation.  
  
  
  
"The Maru? You mean this?" Beka could almost see the wheels turning furiously behind dark eyes. "Which makes you Rebecca {{A/N-checked the spelling at the official site, also thinks doesn't make sense with her nick}} Valentine, and the rumors of a Nietzschean from a dead Pride joining the lunatic trying to restore the Commonwealth true."  
  
  
  
"And me First Officer to that lunatic. Not that I'd disagree on every occasion."  
  
  
  
Shaidyna glanced at the worked gold band on Beka's arm, glinting under the ship's harsh light. "And that?"  
  
  
  
Beka hesitated. "And this is a very pretty bracelet. Nothing more."  
  
  
  
She wasn't sure what she expected, but laughter was not in it. "I knew that something didn't jell right about the two of you. I've seen married couples ready to kill each other, married couples on their honeymoons, and married couples who haven't.been together in waaay too long, but I'd never seen a married couple like you two." Beka supposed she she could understand that, seeing as how they really weren't one. She wondered whether anyone else had come to same conclusion and voiced this aloud.  
  
  
  
"I doubt it. You were mostly around Nietzscheans, from what I understand, and even those who truly can accept human/Nietzschean unions aren't precisely sure what to expect of them."  
  
  
  
Beka muttered, "They're not the only ones. Anyway, now that I've unburdened my soul of its dark secrets, I'm going to go back out there, knock on the Corleone's front door, and ask if they've seen a tall, dark, and generally frightening Nietzschean male about yea high." She gestured somewhere nearing a foot above her head.  
  
  
  
As she left the cramped Command area, Shaidyna called out, "You don't seem like the type to go haring off madly, trying to restore extinct civilizations."  
  
  
  
Beka paused mid-step. "I'm not." A soft smile passed over her lips. "The Commonwealth isn't dead." And let Shaidyna make of that what she would. The Commonwealth did have its fifty worlds, after all.  
  
  
  
So they didn't act like a married couple, didn't they? Well, that was certainly for a lack of effort on her part. Tyr could have at least pretended that the notion of entering into a relationship with a lowly kludge didn't nauseate him. What an ass. She wagered she could find some way that this was entirely his fault. He could have at least.well.could have.here Beka faltered. She didn't know what married Nietzschean men did, and if he had tried acting like a human husband. she shook her head. He should have done something.  
  
  
  
Keeping eyes and ears open, Beka considered her next step. How did she plan on finding Tyr, anyway? He couldn't exactly blend into a crowd, but she suspected that he could keep a very low profile when he wanted to.  
  
  
  
Without warning, one hand closed on her helix and another clapped over her mouth. Beka twisted her head and bit down hard on the palm muffling her shouts as she jabbed her free elbow into her potential kidnapper (or worse) and kicked hard backward and up. "Tell me, Captain Valentine," a low voice said at her ear, "do you daily practice sinking your teeth into the flesh of your enemies?"  
  
  
  
Beka relaxed her assault. "You know, Tyr, you really should look into a career as a holodrama starlet; you really do have a flair for the dramatic." She only wished her heart would slow down and that he didn't smell so damn good. At least she could blame her heart rate on being taken by surprise. After all, he could very well have been a Dheran crime boss with a very large gun at his side and Beka's picture in his wallet.  
  
  
  
He shook his hand, and the blonde pilot thought she saw a few drops of blood near his thumb. She couldn't help feeling a surge of pride. "I won't waste time asking how you planned to find me, though I would be very interested in learning how you thought to discern my location in the planet's largest city with the galaxy's most feared criminal force searching for yours." Releasing her, he gave her a look that told her he knew very well that she'd had no idea beyond the flip of a coin for right or left.  
  
  
  
As they walked, both with hands hovering inches from weapons, Tyr filled her in on the details of his last couple of hours and his plan for getting off this planet. She knew there was a reason she'd always despised the things. "I made a visit to a place frequented by some former colleagues of mine." Mercenaries, then. Beka prayed to the Divine that his plan didn't include those former colleagues of his, but frankly, she'd settle with a Chichin/Nightsider/Magog hybrid right now. What a horrid thought. "No one I had ever known was there save the bartender, but those I did find were more than willing to talk for one of their own, especially when that one bought a round or five."  
  
"Wait, wait, how did they know you used to be one of 'em? Is there some secret mercenary handshake or something?"  
  
"They know." Big help was Tyr Anasazi. "A very high-ranking Dheran hired an entire team, such as it is, to find you, Beka." He regarded her again, somehow contriving to look simultaneously in five directions at the same time.  
  
"Ah-ah, look for us, sugarlips." Something suspiciously close to a grin twitched his lips at the endearment. "My question is how did they not recognize you? I mean, they have to know what we look like in order to dispose of us."  
  
"The team was hired to for you. The Dherans aren't so foolish as to waste time and resources trying to find me." Nietzscheans and their egos. The worst part was that in this case, he was probably right. "I've worked for and against them before; they know what I can do." Very likely the creepiest thing about all this was the utter lack of boasting in his voice. "They're not letting any ship leave the planet without a full, deck-by-deck scan and a search by a dozen former smugglers, all Dheran. And it seems they have a special interest in you, though I'm not sure why."  
  
"Maybe," Beka suggested, "they just like blondes better."  
  
Her attempt to lighten the mood failed. Miserably. "Or they believe a human woman quicker to break under interrogation." Well, or that. "After the eighth round, the team left, although how they propose to find anyone when they can barely find their own feet was unclear." His voice was thick with contempt for anyone so sloppy. "I.confided to the bartender that I know of your location and that I had a design of my own to earn a few thousand crowns, a third of which would be his if he aided me."  
  
Beka's eyebrows tried to climb her forehead. "And I assume you weren't under the influence of those eight rounds?" {{A/N-anyone ever hear the country song "Ten Round of Jose Cuervo? Cos that's all I'm hearing in my head right now.}}  
  
"I was not," he stated simply. "In order for this to succeed, Beka, you're going to have to trust me implicitly, which I know you may find difficult." Eyes looking straight into hers did not mock. He knew the universe as well as she and how trust could kill as surely as any poison and twice as fast. {{A/N-now a song from the Wheel of Time, Trust is the Color of Death.}}  
  
"I could count the number of people I trust one my hand, Tyr." She shrugged. "And somehow, you're one of them. Do you really want your plan to depend on a person who so obviously lacks even the smallest shred of her sanity?"  
  
He laughed, then, a startlingly warm sound from such an imposing figure. His gaze never left hers as he set a hand on her slender neck and traced her jaw with a thumb. She opened her mouth to ask him what he was about, with all this talk of "trusting implicitly" and now this touchy-feely business, though neither bothered her, not really. He did things like the touching at the oddest of times, and she definitely wouldn't trust him if he did start acting all husband-y. All thought fled, however, as he tilted his head to the side, leaned inward.and kissed her. And, as everything Tyr did, this was no mundane, chaste kiss. She could smell his leather, some aftershave-type scent, and very faint, clean perspiration as the short hairs of his short goatee brushed her face. The last notion that drifted across her very perplexed and by now very content brain was that his was quite enough to convince anyone watching.that it was nearly enough to convince her.and then something sharp pricked her arm.  
  
He was still kissing Beka when darkness rolled over her. 


	12. Not Quite La Vie en Rose

I Know of No Saying with the Number Twelve  
  
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  
  
Beka awoke to a great sense of contentment, as if she'd slept for a week and a memory of Tyr's lips soft on hers, a combination that had her sitting up very quickly, flinging back worn sheets to check her state of dress. At the sight of her own clothing fully covering her, she leaned back on a couple of thin pillows and exhaled heavily. That would have been so wrong for so many reasons, and if she hadn't even remembered it. well, that just would have been rubbing salt in the wound.  
  
  
  
For a moment, she half-laid, half-sat on the unfamiliar mattress before another memory returned. That pinpoint jab. She brought her left arm into the center of her field of vision, and sure enough, a tiny mark that hadn't been there yesterday stared back at her. Had the man drugged her?! She would find trusting him a lot easier if he would deign to inform her before injecting mind-altering substances into her bloodstream!  
  
  
  
A corner of her mind noted the absence of her golden helix, but she was far too angry to worry about a trifling matter like jewelry when her crewmate and, she had believed her friend, had just shot her full of.who knew what. The man knew about her Flash addiction!! How dare he violate her body like that? She would make sure he never made it off this forsaken world if it killed her. The nerve!  
  
  
  
She stewed for several minutes, growing more furious with every passing second. The fact that she didn't recognize her surroundings did not help in the least; he might've had the decency to give her some idea of his almighty plan before dumping her off like a tool he no longer had any need for. That soon led to a dark suspicion of betrayal, and slowly, Beka readied the gun she felt at her hip. He had drugged her so casually, and under the guise of kissing her. Bitterly she recriminated herself for every beyond-platonic thought she'd ever had involving him. If he could kiss her like that so easily. Of course, it was possible that he hadn't sold her out to the Dherans or his mercenary pals or whomever, that he was just an incredibly thoughtless ass, but if he had betrayed her and judged Beka Valentine as someone who would give up without a fight. grimly, she drew the weapon out and held it beside her thigh, concealed by the dingy, once- white bedsheets.  
  
  
  
It had been months since she'd truly believed him capable of betraying the crew of the Andromeda; even when he had hared off to the dustbin corner of the galaxy on some mission, she had learned, to save his wife, she hadn't really been able to envision him returning with a fleet of Orca ships to avenge the loss of their home at Dylan's hand. She had been a little shocked to learn that he had a wife, though she had since gathered that she had died, yet another victim of the Knights of Genetic Purity. Absolutely sickening, despicable people, the Genites. If the deaths of millions of Nietzscheans weren't enough, they had murdered Tyr's infant son, and for reasons she never quite dared fathom, that had cut her more deeply than the deaths of all those others. She had wondered if he know that she knew about his son.  
  
  
  
When the bedroom door creaked open, Beka was in a fine state of fury, hurt, and rage, remembering all their time together and everything they had survived together, and she was ready to loose her wrath on the first person to interrupt her dark reverie. "Were we all wrong, Tyr? Were you just waiting for the perfect opportunity to turn on us??" She swallowed back the quiver that had entered her voice, "or am I just too damn paranoid for my own good?"  
  
  
  
Tyr didn't seem to fully comprehend her at first, and then he took in her arm, tense on some object under the sheets. He held his hands away from his sides and approached the slim, sitting figure in as non-threatening a manner as he knew. That she would be angry was a given, but he had truly not expected this.  
  
  
  
"Beka, I swear that I have not betrayed Dylan, the Andromeda, or you."  
  
  
  
His gentle tone completely unbent Beka, and to her horror, she found her animosity dissolving into tears, and she was crying against his chest as he enfolded her in his powerful arms. "Then how could you do that? You knew," she regained a little control over her voice, though tears continued to stream down her cheeks, "you knew about the Flash. How could you??" And she lost it again.  
  
  
  
Tyr berated himself. He had foreseen some emotion, predictable human response for drugging and hauling her here without her consent, but he had forgotten entirely about her previous encounters with mind-altering substances. This was no typical female upset that he had done this without her knowledge, but a rational person terrified that that he had personally delivered her to the heart of her worst nightmare, her greatness weakness. and that which she dreamed of every night and fought each morning.  
  
  
  
He stroked her hair, murmuring quiet words and knowing nothing would ever be sufficient apology. The sight of her weapon, stark metal against soft, threadbare sheets made him shiver inside. Her fear of betrayal was very real, and he realized that it might be a long time before she could trust him again as she had just yesterday. He had known of the cruelty of her own past, of her drug addict and runner father who hadn't deserved the title years before he ultimately succumbed to Flash to which he had sacrificed everything, and the con-artist brother who had chosen the altar of greed as the resting place of quite possibly the only person to ever truly care for him. He respected her for not only surviving but for resisting the many easy-outs open to a young woman struggling to live in this universe, but it struck him just in last few moments the brutality of those years. And all he could do now was hold her.  
  
  
  
Beka's heart-wrenching sobs quieted after a time, and she shifted herself away from the Nietzschean sitting beside her. Immediately, she missed his warmth and solid support. Her eyes burned and she squeezed them shut as she imagined how she must look at the moment.  
  
  
  
"Beka, you were perfectly justified in suspecting my actions. I should have never been so thoughtless, and I apologize." His words came out halting, so unlike his usual mellifluous, assured manner of speaking, that she looked up for the unusual quality of his voice as much as for the words themselves.  
  
  
  
She spoke barely above a whisper. "But you were right. I know you, and you wouldn't have done this unless it was the only possibility." This abrupt turn-around startled Tyr until he comprehended how much of it was Beka trying to convince herself that it had been necessary. It was, but Tyr had never used sole necessity as an excuse for doing anything, for it was merely that.  
  
  
  
"Do you remember the man I mentioned earlier, the bartender?" Beka nodded, unable to lift her eyes from the weave of the comforter pulled up around her waist. "He knows you're here, and he believes I mean to double cross the mercenary team and ransom you directly to the Andromeda. It was a matter of six hundred crowns and half an hour to convince him that betrayal was my true intent." Beka didn't doubt it; Tyr could be very persuasive at times. She did wonder how much he had stashed away that he could afford to throw around six hundred crowns like Sparky tabs. "He possesses an extremely low frequency transmitter, undetectable by Dheran technology, or so he claims."  
  
  
  
So he claims. "Not very reassuring." She discreetly wiped her still slightly soggy eyes with the back of her hand. If he turned out to be mistaken about the powers of his little machine, the Dherans would be ready and waiting for the Andromeda, if they didn't just capture and kill her and Tyr outright. She still wasn't sure why they wished them such bodily harm.  
  
  
  
"In any case, it won't matter. When I use it to try and contact the Andromeda, I'm going to implant a virus into the system and report that sadly, I cannot find the ship, that it must be somehow cloaked."  
  
  
  
In spite of herself, Beka raised an eyebrow. "Cloaked?" Cloaks were mainly the stuff of questionable science-fiction; {{A/N-I love ST (mostly DS9) as much as anybody, don't hurt me!!}} the Andromeda certainly had nothing of the sort.  
  
  
  
Tyr laughed shortly, derisively. "Mehnin Corellidame doesn't know a biplane from a Commonwealth Heavy Cruiser. He wouldn't doubt me if I told him the Andromeda could jump between five dimensions before breakfast."  
  
  
  
She snorted at the idea. Between dimensions indeed. She purposely kept her brain from reminding her of Jeger, Satrina and her Technicolor assassin squad, and their Houdini disappearing acts. There were just creepy. "So let me guess. You're going to inform him that the Maru has some.device capable of what? piercing the cloak?"  
  
  
  
"Convenient, isn't it?"  
  
  
  
Beka grinned wryly and found she could. Then, something hit her. "Your cousin!" At his lack of expression, which she correctly translated to complete and utter confusion and bewilderment, she elaborated. "Shaidyna! She's still on the Maru. She probably thinks something happened to me, to both of us."  
  
  
  
Tyr shot her a glance. "She is not my cousin."  
  
  
  
"Right. Well, it looks like you got everything under control. So, uh, what do I do?"  
  
  
  
Her companion hesitated before answering. "Mehnin saw me bring you in unconscious, so he's going to believe that you will be.upset with me when you wake." Ha. Understatement of the freaking millennium. "I had planned to tranquilize you, with your permission this time, enough that you would remain conscious but clearly unthreatening." Beka was glad to hear the past tense. "However, it should suffice if I bind you convincingly. And," he gave her one of his mysterious half-smiles, "you can take out any.rancor you may have against me. No one will suspect if you prevaricate."  
  
  
  
"Prevaricate, my ass," she muttered and thought she heard Tyr chuckle at that. "All right, tie me up. It won't be the first time a good-looking guy has.never mind." Let him chew on that that for a while. Judging by his face, he definitely didn't know what to make of it.  
  
  
  
Half an hour later, Tyr left Beka, wrists bound behind her back with strips cut from the bottom of her shirt. The one she'd actually liked, and Tyr just had to go and mangle it all to hell. He returned with a tall man with dark red hair and green eyes, just a few inches shorter than himself, though of a narrower build. Beka glowered at the pair, but it took a little effort not to cast a lustful eye after the stranger. Very little, however, seeing as how she was tied up, and not with smooth silk ties. The filthy leer the man was directing at her helped with that too; lust she could handle as well as she could dish out, but this was a "Tarzan see Jane. Tarzan want to take Jane to back of hut and." Well, do something disgusting, obscene, and generally unpleasant to poor Jane.  
  
  
  
Tyr approached her, gun trained at her head, and roughly yanked her to her feet by her wrists after bending to retrieve her faithful grey duffel she just now noticed lying under the bed. Her eyes glittered fiercely at him, but she kept silent. Oh no, she'd save the tongue-lashing for late, when it would be more effective. Or so she told herself; she mostly wanted to perfect opening for the perfect biting comeback, which she hoped might lead to a shouting match. She just felt like shouting.  
  
  
  
"She's a rahght preddy gal, Tyr," the green-eyed man said in a slow drawl. "I don' suppose there'll be a tahme for a liddle somethin' before ya ransum her off." Her clothing should have been in tatters from the looks he gave her.  
  
  
  
"You listen to me, I swear that I will kill you if so much as lay a finger on me. I don't care if the steroid case here shoots me or if I have to hunt you down across the galaxies on foot." He had to strain to catch her quiet words, but he recoiled sharply when they hit him.  
  
  
  
Unfortunately, she was the one tied up here, and the smirk returned all too quickly to the man's face. He opened his mouth to reply when Tyr shot him a dark look. "There will be time for nothing if we do not hurry. If the mercenaries arrive here before we leave, the situation will grow very complicated, very fast." He linked an arm through Beka's, much to the confusion of his bartender friend until he explained that he did so to attract as little attention to their passing as possible; people wouldn't look remember what they saw as a happy couple with a friend nearly as much as two men escorting a captive woman.  
  
  
  
"Rahgt good thinkin', Tyr." I'll right good thinkin' you, buddy, Beka thought menacingly.  
  
  
  
The three of them left the bedroom through its only door, which led down a corridor and past another doorway to the bar, Tyr dragging her and the third of their party swaggering alongside, craning his neck back to watch Beka's back side as she half-walked, half-stumbled beside Tyr. Once, she managed to stick a foot out at the exact moment Tyr's acquaintance decided to get himself a good, long eyeful of Beka's rear end, and send him sprawling. He fell hard against the wall and buckled to his knees before he regained his footing. His head in particular made a satisfying sound as it met the cheap paneling violently.  
  
  
  
Tyr jerked her forward mercilessly with a low mutter of, "Excellent strategy." The tone was angry, as was the wrench that almost pulled her arm out of its socket, which the bartender could hear and see, but he was too far away to understand what exactly that mutter consisted of. She smiled to herself.  
  
  
  
They were halfway down the length of the room when a band of five men burst through the entrance. The men noticed the trio immediately, and at the sight of Beka, hands went to guns and daggers at hips. Without turning his head, Tyr shoved Beka into a chair and crossed the room quickly toward the armed group, speaking in low tones as soon as they could hear him. After a moment of indecision, of looking between the men and Beka, now out from under Tyr's eyes, Mehnin joined the other six. Beka wished she could catch the words exchanged, but by Tyr's calming gestures and the many glances at her, she could guess the identities of the men and the subject of conversation. She busied herself shifting her wrists in their binds, taking pressure off the raw patches and wondering how the plan was to change if, as she feared, the mercenaries were about to become a part of the deception. Their recognition of her crewmate and the many weapons she saw about their persons named them as soldiers for hire.  
  
  
  
A few minutes later, Tyr returned and, with an uncharacteristic smile that was becoming rather more characteristic recently, pulled her up again. He spun her and retied the strips that held fast her hands, leaving one end in her right palm, so she could tug it when needed. Theoretically.  
  
  
  
Their troupe sauntered toward the bar, and she saw a tiny slip of something glint in his hand as he deftly worked the communicator, then disappear into a slot near the top of the thing. The screen went grey, then black, and Tyr cursed and pounded the device. She would bet that he really had been a holodrama star in a past life.  
  
  
  
The six men put their heads together and, after more fervent words, Tyr grabbed her elbow and ungently led her toward and out the door. Expressionless so as not to give any hint of his words to those watching, he whispered to he that two would guard her in the Maru. A veritable cloud of mercenaries surrounded them, all laughing about how they'd spend the money they earned from this job and how Tyr would spend his fleeing from the Dherans for the rest of his natural life. Occasionally, he popped off a sarcastic line or two, and the rest would erupt in guffaws. They sounded more than a little drunk to Beka's ears, but any mercenary intoxicated on the job would soon find himself without one. Probably those eight rounds of Tyr's.  
  
  
  
To her silent delight, Tyr related off-hand the tripping-of-annoying- bartender incident, and to her surprise, the mercenaries found this extremely hilarious, slapping each other's backs and warning one another to watch their hands around her. Even better, the butt of the story slunk to the back of the coterie, sullenly stalking behind the others.  
  
  
  
"It looks like restoring dead empires hasn't taken everything outta her yet!" one laughed. She felt oddly flattered by this, though all she could do was glare and mutter incomprehensible somethings.  
  
  
  
"It's a good thing you ran into us, Tyr; the vixen might've taken you hostage. Look at 'er, staring straight ahead. Wheels are turnin' in that pretty head-you just know she's plannin' something."  
  
  
  
In her sulkiest tone, she scoffed. "You think I'm going to find anyone who'll lay down a single crown for this Uber?" She was rewarded with more laughter and a severe jerk on her arm. Oh, they were eating this up.  
  
  
  
Finally, the hulking pile of scrap metal affectionately called a ship came into view. Whilst the mercenaries made their smart-aleck jokes, much less appreciated now, at the poor Maru's expense, Tyr formed a circle in the air with his left fist, then twisted it and pulled it low. Beka crinkled her forehead at this but affected not to notice-some Kodiak symbol for Shaidyna perhaps, telling her to stay out of sight.  
  
If it was that, it succeeded. The Nietzschean woman was nowhere to be seen when they boarded. He still couldn't crack the ship's codes, so he held his firearm to the small of Beka's back as she entered it into the pad near the main door, after a stern admonition that he look the other way. Bound or not, she could still be uncooperative for as long as she darn well pleased, and he couldn't very well extract the codes from a corpse. or so she hoped the mercenaries gathered when he averted his eyes. More jokes came of his not gaining access, and Beka reflected that now that she thought of it, many of the comedians she'd seen on casino drifts and the like could have been former mercenaries. An image of a Perseid coming at her with one of Tyr's titanic weapons made her giggle under her breath.  
  
"You two with her. And be careful-this is her ship, and she knows it better than any of us." Why Tyr should suggest that to the mercenaries made little sense to Beka, but she supposed it would help convince them of his little ruse. And that's all it is, she told herself with barely a quaver.  
  
The taller of the guards insisted that he didn't need to be reminded of that as he took Beka's wrists. He was gentler around tugging her this way and that than Tyr, quite a welcome relief. The Nietzschean waved them in the vague direction of the crew bunks, exactly as they had planned. It was also the only real option the pair had; they weren't about to risk her in the engine room, where she cause serious damage with very little movement if she positioned herself correctly.  
  
When he let go Beka's arms, the man, who called himself Briyart, indicated that Beka should make herself comfortable on one of the low beds. She plopped down on the former Vexpag's bunk, and it occurred to her that she would regret shooting these men, as they seemed rather pleasant, as killers for hire went. To be fair, they were pleasant enough for anyone, and she had to remind herself firmly that they were mercenaries, pushed the fact that Tyr had been one out of her mind, and that they only reason that hadn't handed her to the Dherans was the prospect of a greater reward this way.  
  
"If you guys have time later, would you mind fatally wounding Mehnin Corellidame for me? I'd pay you, but." She shrugged.  
  
Briyart chuckled. "I'll be sorry to turn you over to the Dherans when this is all over, so yeah, I will. Consider it my apology." The other man snorted, not disagreeing.  
  
She folded her hands under her head as she flopped back and painstakingly unknotted the fabric binding her so that neither appointed guard would notice. "If anyone owes me an apology-I mean, not that the guys who are about to toss me to a bunch of ruthless gangsters don't-it's that anabolic Uber in my cockpit. Do you have any idea how many times Beka Valentine's amazing piloting skills have saved that genetically-engineered butt?" Just as Briyart met his cohort's eye to share the joke, she reached behind the mattress, pulled out the gun wedged against the wall, and fired multiple times. The charge wasn't at its highest, but that many could be deadly. The second man drew his own weapon as Beka pushed herself off the bed and to the side, firing all the way. He dropped like a stone a meter or so from his companion, but this was far from over. More would be arriving in seconds to investigate the shots.  
  
Beka swung herself up on to Harper's bunk and rummaged through the strange odds and frightening ends until she located her quarry, an anti-grav harness. Sotto voce, she ordered the Maru to gradually increase the artificial gravity levels on the corridor leading from Command to the stacked-up bunks laughingly referred to as the crew quarters so the AG field would be at two and a half times its norm. The ship complied, and just as she had anticipated, the two who came to check on the noise found themselves moving extremely sluggishly, as if through thick mud, while she leapt lightly from the bend and kicked guns from hands just now firing. Despite the increased gravity, they moved with surprising speed, though not enough to hamper Beka. Moving in a way that defied normal laws of physics, she clutched the bar just beneath Harper's bed that held the thing up and shot herself forward, knocking one of the two onto his back. The other reached her then, but she took advantage of his increased weight as she kneed him and rolled his mass over one shoulder so he actually flipped before landing square on his head. She winced at the clang it made on the metal floor.  
  
As she restored the AG fields back to normal and removed the harness, she sprinted to Command and heard more shots. Just as expected, she entered into a scene not much  
  
different than the one she had left. Blue eyes met brown, and she nodded, sliding into the familiar shape of the pilot's chair. Without a word, she started up the engine and lifted the Maru straight up into the sky. Not even Tyr could keep his balance against that, and Beka considered it only proper, as she hadn't found an opportunity to deliver that tongue-lashing after all.  
  
Footsteps echoed behind them. "Oh, you have got to be kidding!" Beka yelled, bulldozing through ship traffic around the planet. "Come on, they were down." She counted no less than twenty different ship designs of those she cut off, grazed, and nearly killed. That could very possibly be a record of people she had pissed off in a five-minute span.  
  
"Tyr, were those the kind of people you've associated with since the pride was destroyed?" Surprise and something close to disdain tinged the female voice Beka recognized with a sigh of relief as Shaidyna's. Ooh, family tension. She waited to see how Tyr would respond; she had no idea how Nietzscheans handled these domestic quarrels and was curious.  
  
"I did what I had to do in order to survive. It was that or remain a slave in uranium mines." Beka would have surmised that he'd had many more career opportunities than that, but she kept her mouth shut. The World According to Seamus Harper, page either nine, paragraph two: never mess with Nietzschean family politics. Those were the worst families and the worst politics.  
  
Then she saw the miniature fleet poised kilometers above her, all three hundred odd battler cruisers and combat relief ships. "This really is a lovely Kodiak moment," even she had to groan inwardly as she said it, "but we got some more pressing issues here. Three hundred and fifteen, to be exact. Tyr, you're on fire control and Shaidyna, you're in charge of sensors. Route every little thing you find, every screw those ships that we can exploit, to me and Tyr." She was too far removed from the traffic below to blend in innocently, but that hadn't really been her scheme anyway. "All right, one of the few advantages we have is we're in no danger from friendly fire. Unfriendly fire, yes, but we'll make do with what we have."  
  
"I contacted the Andromeda about seven minutes ago under the pretense of a ransom demand. They should be here within the hour."  
  
Beka took a deep breath. Great. At least there would be some chance of identifying their bodies. "And what ingenious method did you contrive to relay to our valorous captain that you hadn't actually betrayed us for a few thousand crowns?"  
  
Thinking of friendly fire gave her an idea, though not one she particularly liked. "Before you answer that, I'm gonna turn a hard 180 and head right back down into that planet's atmosphere. I don't care what pattern you use, just keep those guys from shooting us in the back while we run!"  
  
"Argosy Special Operations morse code, and.aye." Shrieks of weapons fire from her beloved bucket of bolts filled her ears as she pulled the Maru up and dove into deceptively mild fluffy white-and-blue of the planet below her. She hated to imagine what she was doing to her ship, but the Maru had held his own through worse. She continued down at insane speed until what remained of her sensors told her that the bulk of the small battalion had entered the planet's stratosphere, then veered sixty degrees port, grateful to see nothing but forests and hills-she hadn't wanted to involve civilians in this. Clouds scudded past the Maru, and she had only her natural sense of direction and her view window to keep her a little more than a mile above the surface and from crashing into any sudden mountain ranges.  
  
One moment, snowy feathers brushed by the Maru's hull, and the next, dark grey enveloped everything. "Ah, and the universe deals us the Queen of Spades," Beka announced, anticipation, satisfaction, and a touch of nervousness mingled in her voice.  
  
"Maybe I've been away from civilization too long, but I have no idea what any sort of monarchy has to do with a hurricane, especially when we're flying directly into one!" Shaidyna's shout was barely audible over the gusts and thunderous claps that rocked the Maru.  
  
"It's from a card game, Hearts. They still play it at casino drifts once in a while." Beka explained her metaphor as she danced the vessel between continuous forks of blinding brilliance. "The Queen of Spades is worth the most points, and you don't want points," unless you planned to shoot the moon, but she wasn't about to go into a detailed description at this point. "If you get the Queen, you can pass it at the beginning, and a lot of people do. If you're good, fearless, and not betting too much money, you can hold onto it and lay it on your opponent when he least expects it. And believe me, they're not expecting this!" She pulled back as far as she could without leaving the storm cover, then plummeted the ship into the churning water at a velocity that would've cracked anything smaller like an egg. Hell, it might still crack the Maru.  
  
"Captain Valentine, may I remind you that-"  
  
"I will say this one time and one time only, Tyr. I'm driving this thing through a hurricane, and if you want to pass on those paranoid genes of yours, you're going to shut the f-"  
  
"They're gone." The quiet of the other woman's voice caught Beka's attention as the shock of the words silenced her.  
  
"They're gone? Are you sure you're not just reading the Maru's complete lack of functioning sensors?" If she had, Beka would be highly annoyed. Just when she'd had the chance to give Tyr the what-for.  
  
"I'm sure. No, wait. There are a few left.a dozen or so, I can't tell.and they're hovering around the edge of the storm," as would any sane person. "We, on the other hand, have just entered the eye." Beka rolled her eyes and prepared the scoff to end all scoffs when she truly heard what was going on around them. Or in this case, what wasn't going on-absolute stillness reigned outside the Maru. Klaxons blared and sheets of light flashed around them, but right here.  
  
Slowly, warily, she raised the Maru out of the ocean. She could plainly make out gales of wind flinging rain in every direction and roiling the waves until they seemed to boil by jagged bolts of lightning that illuminated the otherwise black gloom, but in an area not much larger than the Maru itself, a tiny space of calm had opened up. The sensors still online crackled with electricity, but Shaidyna was right. The Dherans were gone. 


	13. The Ending That Solves Nothing!

Well, this being the very last section, I'd like to say a few words before ending it.  
  
Ahem.  
  
First of all, I'd like to thank the Academy...erm *shuffles notes* Um, wrong speech.  
  
Excuse me. Hold on a moment.  
  
*hold music-dee doo dee da, dee da dee dum doo da*  
  
Ah. Here we go. I'd like to thank everyone who read this, more to those who read and didn't hate it, and even more to those who commmented.  
  
Next, if anyone mayhap be interested in an odd little Wheel of Time bit I'm currently writing, e-mail me. I'm fairly sure it's unlike any other Wot fanfic...at least any other I've read.  
  
Um...being the first chaptered fanfic I've ever done (well, finished, I should say), I'm feeling all cheery and such, so I'll give a few more shout- outs. To my Warder, you get the first shout-out cos you're my Warder! *hug you and to all portalstone people* To anyone in the KHC Tyrant RP, just cos I love that RP, second shout-out! And...I know there are tons more, gold stars for everyone!!  
  
That said...  
  
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  
  
Epilogue-ish bit that really doesn't resolve anything  
  
"Captain, the Eureka Maru just dove into the middle that typhoon!" The A.I. spoke as if unsure whether Rebecca Valentine had impossibly saved herself or completely lost her sanity.  
  
"Beka did what?! There's no way that hunk of junk can stand up to that kind of punishment!" Harper's voice rose to a near fever pitch.  
  
"Mister Harper, I trust Beka is doing what she deems necessary, and I suggest we focus on those ships chasing her so she doesn't have to do it much longer. Trance!"  
  
The red-haired woman at weapons control nodded. "Saving their sixes, aye." Dylan had to chuckle to himself as Harper looked up from his own console long enough to shoot her a very bewildered glance. Missiles, precise slashes of blue, and great sheets of green rained down to the planet below. He counted on the Dheran ships having a hard enough time dodging the indifferent strikes of the storm that they wouldn't be in any condition to try avoiding those not so indifferent, and the explosions below proved him right.  
  
The beautiful face on the viewscreen smiled as the attack met its targets. "They're running, sir"  
  
"Nice work, Trance. Now let's go find Captain Valentine before that ship of hers springs a leak down there."  
  
· · · · · · · · · · · · · · · ·  
  
They did just that, and within the hour Tyr had promised, seven beings were seated in the officer's mess: three human, two Nietzschean (though one appeared human and was relentlessly hit on by the shortest human), one android and one.Trance. After Beka introduced the dark-eyed woman as Tyr's cousin, which he didn't bother to deny as he glared ominously at Harper, the engineer started considering how to flirt with the female Nietzschean without the older man's notice; she seemed to enjoy the attention, though sadly not return the feeling behind it.  
  
"So," Dylan asked jovially, "how was married life?" Beka promptly dug the golden helix out from where she had discovered it in her grey duffel and threw it. At his head. 


End file.
